Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Aphra Behn
-
Standard Name: Behn, Aphra
Birth Name: Aphra Johnson
Married Name: Aphra Behn
Pseudonym: Astrea
Used Form: A. B.
Used Form: Mrs A. Behn
Used Form: Mrs Behn
Used Form: Mrs A. Behn, the author of the Rover
Used Form: author of the Voyage to the Isle of Love
Used Form: by the Same Hand
It is difficult to summarise AB
's immense and complex importance for the history of women's writing. Virginia Woolf
said she deserved from all women a tribute of flowers because she was the first to bring together writing and earning. In fact only two professional (as opposed to amateur) dramatists of either sex (Dryden
and Shadwell
) emerged before her on the Restoration stage. Theatrical writing (mostly comedy) supported her for the major part of her career as one of the period's most prolific and popular dramatists. Her poems and translations are also significant in the story of those genres. Later she pioneered the important new forms of novella and full-length epistolary novel. She exploited to the full a raunchy period during which social criticism clothed itself naturally in sex comedy; her gender made her a belated partaker in the academic rediscovery and rehabilitation of the Restoration age.
DM
seems the most likely author of an anonymous elegy on Aphra Behn
, published six days after her death.
Foxton, Rosemary. “Delariviere Manley and ‘Astrea’s Vacant Throne’”. Notes and Queries, Vol.
231 (new series 33: 1)
, pp. 41-2.
41-2
The ascription of this tribute has become more credible with the revelation of DM
Textual Features
Delarivier Manley
The text belongs to a genre well-known in France as the chronique scandaleuse, and popularised in England through the writings of Madame d'Aulnoy
(who had been much translated, and had already influenced DM
). It...
Intertextuality and Influence
Delarivier Manley
It presents a report on the state of the world, or at least the nation, by the goddess Astrea or Justice, who in classical myth fled to heaven at the end of the Golden Age...
Literary Setting
Sophia Lee
Matilda's narrative (addressed to a female friend) opens and dominates the novel. At first she and Ellinor believe that Mrs Marlow, the beautiful, elegant, and femininely helpless woman who brings them up, is their mother...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Julia Kavanagh
In this second work of women's literary history, JK
once again limits herself to the novel. Her canon comprises ten authors, from Aphra Behn
to Sydney Morgan
by way of Sarah Fielding
, Frances Burney
Reception
Julia Kavanagh
Jewsbury
, again reviewing in the Athenæum, called this work a pleasant contribution to the literature of the times.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1826 (1862): 528
She continued (folding together the woman writer with her work in a...
Textual Features
Muriel Jaeger
MJ
here relates the lives of five people who succeeded in living according to [c]oherent schemes of human behaviour, putting into practice their own theories of the good life. Cato (The Stoic) and George Sand...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Inchbald
The plot of intrigue here, set in Madrid, suggests Aphra Behn
without the cross-dressing. A scholar has kept the existence of his young wife a secret: there follow a hue and cry, a threatened...
Reception
Margaret Holford
The writer of the note which follows this play in The New British Theatre was not sure if it had ever been staged. The note maintained that the play's quality contradicted the common belief that...
Textual Features
Barbara Hofland
The title-page quotes James Montgomery
. The story, set in the seventeenth century, opens as Iwanowna marries Frederic Moldovani on her nineteenth birthday. News of his death closes the first volume; but tragedy is held...
Author summary
Eliza Haywood
EH
was the most prolific novelist by number of titles (even ignoring those doubtfully ascribed) between Aphra Behn
and Charlotte Smith
. She also wrote poems, plays, periodicals, conduct books, translation, and theatre history. Her...
Textual Production
Eliza Haywood
Later editions increase the number of prefatory tributes. The sixth (a handsome publication with a two-colour title page) places first a poem of compliment by the young James Sterling
. Sterling presents EH
as a...
Textual Production
Eliza Haywood
This play (based on Aphra Behn
's The Lucky Chance, 1686) was published soon afterwards.
Monthly Catalogue, 1723-1730. Gregg Press.
6 (1723-30)
It went through three London editions, an edition at Glasgow in 1757, and an adaptation and condensation...
Textual Features
Eliza Haywood
Fillamour, having eloped with Philenia and spent their first night at a bagnio, is still unhappy at the prospect of living a mean and obscure life when married.
Haywood, Eliza. The Unequal Conflict. J. Walthoe and J. Crokatt.
49
Philenia settles under a false name...
Textual Features
Eliza Haywood
The author deliberately confuses her or his identity: a fictional correspondent cites contradictory opinions as to whether it is EH
, or some other daughter of Behn
or Manley
, or a man dissimulating his...
