Aphra Behn

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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.
Engraving of Aphra Behn circa 1675, after a portrait by Mary Beale. Seated, she is wearing a pearl necklace and a voluminous gown.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
They include a novel in five letters (Indamora to Lindamira), a verse-and-prose romance (The Adventurer), and poems in various pastoral and classical modes—epistles, lyrics, etc. The novel gives a voice to...
Intertextuality and Influence Edith Templeton
The epigraph alerts the reader to expect an unusually disillusioned example of the voyage-to-the-island-of-love genre (previously written by Aphra Behn and the future Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ). This novel begins, as did the two...
Intertextuality and Influence Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The emotional outpouring of the early letters sounds unmediated; yet they are modelled on a style used in epistolary fiction by Behn and Haywood .
Intertextuality and Influence Susan Smythies
The novel offers in passing an amusing catalogue of an old-fashioned library, whose first items are heroic romances like Ibraham; Cassandra; Cleopatra [by Madeleine de Scudéry and Gauthier de La Calprenède ]. Several...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Wiseman
Her poems, full of character and ingenuity, spring from social interchange. The title piece is a longish, narrative, occasional poem, Sent with a Pair of China Basons
Wiseman, Jane. “A Fairy Tale, Inscrib’d, to the Honourable Mrs. W— With Other Poems (1917)”. Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700-1740, edited by William Christmas, Pickering and Chatto, 2003, pp. 34-46.
34
to JW 's dedicatee (who may probably...
Intertextuality and Influence Catherine Gore
Like CG 's Cecil he is a dandy in love with his own looks, which in his case include his exceptionally small size (said to be about that of a full-grown mouse). Of concomitant beauty...
Intertextuality and Influence Madeleine de Scudéry
Aphra Behn took from the Carte de tendre some of the topographical imagery of her verse-and-prose romance A Voyage to the Island of Love (which in turn was the model behind The Adventurer, written...
Intertextuality and Influence Maureen Duffy
The play takes a biographical approach, as Woolf , from the vantage point of imminent death, looks back over her past life. The only two other characters are Vita Sackville-West and Sigmund Freud ; Duffy...
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Sappho 's name was an honorific for women writers for generations. George Puttenham may have been the first to use it to compliment a writing woman: in Parthienades, 1579, he said that Queen Elizabeth
Intertextuality and Influence Maureen Duffy
Living her afterlife on Mount Parnassus, Duffy's Sappho is familiar with women poets who have written in English: her favourite is Aphra Behn .
Duffy, Maureen. “My Life with Aphra Behn”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
19
, No. 2, 13 Feb. 2012.
244
Intertextuality and Influence Ariadne
Ariadne says she is a young lady, who has had an Inclination . . . for Scribling from my Childhood.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Her preface invokes both Behn and Philips . The play was published in 1696. In...
Intertextuality and Influence Penelope Aubin
Having related his marriage in Lady Lucy, PA is forced (rather like Behn opening The Second Part of the Rover or Defoe opening Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe) to begin her sequel with...
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Centlivre
The allusion to Aphra Behn is deliberate. SC 's correspondents included George Farquhar .
Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press, 1952.
19, 24ff
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Centlivre
This play owes something to Behn 's The Feigned Courtesans, 1679. Its action is supposed to be taking place during a single night, entirely in the dark. It abounds, even beyond what was common...

Timeline

25 February 1729: The Haymarket Theatre, hitherto occupied...

Building item

25 February 1729

The Haymarket Theatre , hitherto occupied by temporary foreign troupes, opened as a mainstream theatre.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
2: 987, 1017

November 1739: Sir Roger L'Estrange's prose translation...

Writing climate item

November 1739

Sir Roger L'Estrange 's prose translation of Aesop 's Fables (formerly treated in snappy couplets by Aphra Behn ) was printed—by Samuel Richardson .
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. Editor Sabor, Peter, Penguin, 1985.
522n79

1 February 1749: The Behn-Southerne play of Oroonoko had the...

Building item

1 February 1749

The Behn -Southerne play of Oroonoko had the single most important performance . . . in its long history—
Basker, James G. “Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and OroonokoThe Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
12
, AMS Press, 2001, pp. 47-66.
51
watched by two Africans who had shared the hero's fate of betrayal into slavery.
Basker, James G. “Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and OroonokoThe Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
12
, AMS Press, 2001, pp. 47-66.
51-3 and n15, 20

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
12: 512
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
86-7
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
286-7

1 December 1759: John Hawkesworth in turn adapted Thomas Southerne's...

Building item

1 December 1759

John Hawkesworth in turn adapted Thomas Southerne 's dramatic adaptation of Aphra Behn 's Oroonoko, making it for the first time a solidly anti-slavery text.
Basker, James G. “Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and OroonokoThe Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
12
, AMS Press, 2001, pp. 47-66.
47, 48, 53-5, 57, 59

By August 1775: Sarah Siddons first performed the role of...

Women writers item

By August 1775

Sarah Siddons first performed the role of Hamlet at Worcester: she went on to repeat the part at Manchester, Bristol, and probably Liverpool even before she finally cracked the London stage in 1782.
Woo, Catherine. “Sarah Siddons’s Performances as Hamlet: Breaching the Breeches Part”. European Romantic Review, Vol.
18
, No. 5, Dec. 2007, pp. 573-95.
574 and n10

1785: Botanist Thomas Martyn translated into English...

Building item

1785

Botanist Thomas Martyn translated into English a work of Rousseau 's of 1771-3 as Letters on the Elements of Botany, Addressed to a Lady: it had eight editions in the next thirty years.
Shteir, Ann B. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
19-20
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

31 January 1809: The House of Commons held a hearing on Mary...

National or international item

31 January 1809

The House of Commons held a hearing on Mary Anne Clarke 's alleged selling, for her own profit, of positions in the army.
Feminist Companion Archive.

1814: John Colin Dunlop published The History of...

Writing climate item

1814

John Colin Dunlop published The History of Fiction: Being a Critical Account of the Most Celebrated Prose Works of Fiction, from the Earliest Greek Romances to the Novels of the Present Age.
Warner, William Beatty. Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750. University of California Press, 1998.
15, 18
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

1 November 1818: William Hazlitt gave the first lecture in...

Writing climate item

1 November 1818

William Hazlitt gave the first lecture in his series entitled Lectures on the English Comic Writers.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
21 (1819): 264
Keynes, Geoffrey, Sir. Bibliography of William Hazlitt. Second Edition, St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1981.
46-7

1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...

Women writers item

1825

Alexander Dyce , then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210-11
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 81
Salzman, Paul. “How Alexander Dyce Assembled Specimens of British Poetesses: A Key Moment in the Transmission of Early Modern Women’s Writing”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
26
, No. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 88-105.
88-9, 91, 95-6, 97, 98, 101

1829: The steel busk front fastening first appeared...

Building item

1829

The steel busk front fastening first appeared on corsets.
Waugh, Norah. Corsets and Crinolines. Theatre Arts Books, 1970.
79
Aphra Behn had once celebrated in verse the noble fate of a tree cut down to make wooden busks.

1980: The Women's Playhouse Trust was founded to...

Women writers item

1980

The Women's Playhouse Trust was founded to improve opportunities in the theatre for women writers, directors, designers, administrators, technicians and actresses,
Page, Louise. Beauty and the Beast. Methuen in association with the Women’s Playhouse Trust, 1986.
between 22 and 23
building on feminist fringe activity but within the mainstream.
Carlson, Susan. Women and Comedy: rewriting the British theatrical tradition. University of Michigan Press, 1991.
290

May 1992: The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British...

Women writers item

May 1992

The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association held its first annual conference. Thereafter the conference was held at a different American location each year.
Parker, Pamela Corpron. “A Conference of Our Own: on the 20th Anniversary of the BWWA”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
16
, No. 1, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2012, p. 6.
6

1994: Juggernaut was set up as a small New York...

Women writers item

1994

Juggernaut was set up as a small New York theatre company; in 2001 it decided to publicise the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women playwrights.
Goreau, Angeline. “These Women Seduced By Wit”. New York Times, 9 Mar. 2003, p. Section 2: 7.

Texts

Behn, Aphra. “Prologue”. Romulus and Hersilia, D. Brown and T. Benskin, 1683, p. A2r.
Seneca Unmasqued. Editor Primer, Irwin, Translator Behn, Aphra, AMS, 1995.
Behn, Aphra. Sir Patient Fancy. Richard and Jacob Tonson, 1678.
Behn, Aphra. The Amorous Prince. Thomas Dring, 1671.
Behn, Aphra. The City-Heiress. Brown, Benskin and Rhodes, 1682.
Behn, Aphra. The Counterfeit Bridegroom. Langley Curtiss, 1677.
Behn, Aphra. The Debauchee. John Amery, 1677.
Behn, Aphra, and John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester. “The Disappointment”. Poems on Several Occasions, 1680, p. F6v - G1r.
Behn, Aphra. The Dutch Lover. Thomas Dring, 1673.
Behn, Aphra. The Emperor of the Moon. Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, 1687.
Behn, Aphra. The Fair Jilt. W. Canning, 1688.
Behn, Aphra. The False Count. Jacob Tonson, 1682.
Behn, Aphra. The Feigned Courtesans. Jacob Tonson, 1679.
Behn, Aphra. The Forc’d Marriage. James Magnus, 1671.
Behn, Aphra. The Histories and Novels. S. Briscoe, 1698.
Behn, Aphra, and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. The History of Oracles. 1688.
Behn, Aphra. The History of the Nun. A. Baskerville, 1689.
Behn, Aphra. The Lucky Chance. W. Canning, 1687.
Behn, Aphra. The Roundheads. Brown, Benskin and Rhodes, 1682.
Behn, Aphra. The Rover. John Amery, 1677.
Behn, Aphra. The Rover Part II. Jacob Tonson, 1681.
Behn, Aphra. The Town-Fopp. James Magnes and Richard Bentley, 1677.
Behn, Aphra. The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn. Editor Greer, Germaine, Stump Cross Books, 1989.
Behn, Aphra. The Widow Ranter. James Knapton, 1690.
Behn, Aphra. The Woman Turn’d Bully. T. Dring, 1675.