Aphra Behn

14 December 1640 - 16 April 1689

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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...
Literary responses	Vita Sackville-West	VSW probably hoped to challenge Woolf with her picture of a devil-may-care professional woman writer. But Woolf regarded Aphra Behn (when in its opening stages) as merely a straightforward task to keep one's machinery engaged...
Literary responses	Mary Hays	One of Jane Austen 's sisters-in-law owned a copy. Some reviewers objected both to content and arrangement. The European Review was not untypical in that although it expressed some admiration it also called for a...
Literary responses	Anna Maria Falconbridge	AMF appears as a fictional character (at Freetown, Sierra Leone) in Lawrence Hill 's novel The Book of Negroes, 2007, perhaps more on account of her first husband's writing than her own. Hill, Lawrence. The Book of Negroes. Black Swan, 2010. 423ff
Literary responses	Sarah Chapone	SC 's friend and printer Richardson saw her project in a different and far more simple light than she did: as the administering by a good woman of an antidote to the Poison shed by...
Literary responses	Martha Fowke	This notice compared Fowke to her advantage with both Orinda and Astrea (Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn ), and added: When Love's thy Theme, no low Desire appears, / Chaste are thy Sighs, seraphick...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Tipper	The volume is further prefaced by six poems in ET 's praise (or seven, counting the English translation of the one in Latin), all written by men. John Hallum says she excels Behn and Philips
Literary responses	Hannah Cowley	Anna Seward included HC among her seven celebrated Female Poets Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers. 59 (1789): 292 of the present day in April 1789. Recent critical comment on her includes an examination of her use of marriage law in...
Literary responses	Hannah More	The death of such a revered character produced an instant backlash. Thomas de Quincey (who had visited HM unwillingly as a young man) attacked both her literary works and her character in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine...
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...
Occupation	Mary Wesley	During the first year of the Second World War MW , like many women, got her first job. She did code-breaking as a civil servant with MI5 , and (like Aphra Behn before her) filed...
Occupation	Marie-Catherine d' Aulnoy	Literary historian Paula McDowell believes that MCA worked as a spy for the French government (as Aphra Behn did for the English). McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon, 1998. 263-4 and n88
Occupation	Thomas Otway	TO seems to have become an actor in or soon after 1670 and a playwright in 1675. As a young and very nervous actor he was assisted and encouraged by Aphra Behn . She is...
Occupation	John Dryden	By this time Dryden's two careers as writer and dramatist were well launched. The first depended on his ability to please the Stuart court, and the second on his ability to please a theatre audience...
Performance of text	Frances Boothby	FB 's Marcelia; or, The Treacherous Friend, a tragicomedy, was performed by the King's Company at Bridges Street, Drury Lane, before Aphra Behn began her theatrical career. Milling, Jane. “’In the Female Coasts of Fame’: women’s dramatic writing on the public stage, 1669-71”. Women’s Writing, Vol. 7 , No. 2, 2000, pp. 267-93. 277

Timeline

27 October 2009

In Washington, DC, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Washington Shakespeare Company together launched a Sort-of-Jane-Austen Play Reading Festival presenting women playwrights.

“Sort-of-Jane Austen Play Reading Festival”. Washington Shakespeare Company.

10 March 2021

Torrey Peters became the first trans woman to be longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, for her novel Detransition, Baby.

“Torrey Peters on the Women’s Prize 2021 Longlist”. Serpent’s Tail, 10 Mar. 2021, https://serpentstail.com/2021/03/10/torrey-peters-on-the-womens-prize-2021-longlist/.

Texts

Behn, Aphra. The Works of Aphra Behn. Editor Todd, Janet, William Pickering, 1992, 7 Vols.

Behn, Aphra. The Young King. Brown, Benskin and Rhodes, 1683.

Behn, Aphra. The Younger Brother. J. Harris, 1696.

Behn, Aphra. To Poet Bavius. Printed for the author, 1688.

Behn, Aphra. “To the Unknown Daphnis on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius”. De Natura Rerum, translated by. Thomas Creech, 2nd ed., Anthony Stephens, 1683, p. d3r - e2r.