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.
The book was handsomely produced, having a decorated dedication page, and a frontispiece featuring an oval portrait (or fictitious portrait) of Ephelia, with a heraldic badge above the picture and a pedestal bearing her engraved...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Ephelia
Among the poems of praise, To Madam Bhen [sic] (then a not uncommon rendering of Behn) adapts from Cowley
's famous praise of Philips
the idea of uniting the Strong and Sweet.
Ephelia,. Female Poems on Several Occasions. James Courtney.
73
Textual Production
Maureen Duffy
MD
published The Passionate Shepherdess, a life of Aphra Behn
, which remained the best in the field for twenty years.
British Book News. British Council.
(1977): May insert
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.
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
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.
244
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...
Author summary
Mary Davys
MD
was one of the first wave of novelists to follow Aphra Behn
during the early eighteenth century. She also wrote plays and poetry, and is known as an Irish writer.
Textual Production
Clemence Dane
The tale of Covent Garden begins with Inigo Jones
's building there in the 1630s of the first London square, prototype for many more. CD
throws together a colourful account of its local characters and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Hannah Cowley
The action is set in Madrid. The title reverses the gender roles of Susanna Centlivre
's A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Of the paired heroines, Victoria reclaims her faithless husband, Carlos, by...
Intertextuality and Influence
Hannah Cowley
This time HC
based herself on Aphra Behn
: on The Luckey Chance. Her play does not resemble Congreve's The Mourning Bride. Set in Portugal, it traces the unsuccessful attempts of one...
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...
Textual Production
Sarah Chapone
SC
had an important role in George Ballard
's pioneering work of women's history and women's biography. She introduced him to an even more important influence, Elizabeth Elstob
; she helped in his research; and...
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...
Textual Production
Susanna Centlivre
Though SC
was good at French, this copy of Fontenelle may well have been the translation by Aphra Behn
.
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.
