Little is known about the enigmatic Aphra Behn other than the fact that she was the first Englishwoman to write professionally. She is believed to have been born Aphra Johnson in a small town near Canterbury, England, in July 1640. In the 1660s she may (as she claims in Oroonoko) have traveled to Surinam, a British plantation colony on the Atlantic coast of South America. Later in that same decade, she acted as a spy in the Netherlands on behalf of the newly restored King Charles II. Returning penniless to London and having failed to persuade the government to reimburse her for the money she had spent on gathering intelligence, she seems to have served some time in debtors’ prison. She began writing to pay her debts, in the end producing from 15 to 20 plays that enjoyed notable success on the London stage. The best known is The Rover (1677), which, like her other plays, features the intrigue and bawdiness common in Restoration drama. While she also wrote poetry, Behn is remembered today primarily for Oroonoko, one of the earliest examples of a new literary form—the novel.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 5,277 words (approx. 18 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: A True History Access Pass.
