Aphra Behn was one of the best and most successful comic writers in a great age of English comedy. If her plays are less polished than those of George Etherege and William Wycherley, it must be remembered that, unlike them, she had to support herself: sh...

All women writers, observed Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1928), "ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." The prolific Behn was the first professional female writer i...

Aphra Behn, one of the most influential dramatists of the late seventeenth century, was also a celebrated poet and novelist. Her contemporary reputation was founded primarily on her "scandalous" plays, which she claimed would not have been criticized for...