British playwright, poet and spy (1640–1689)
Aphra Behn | |
|---|---|
Behn c. 1670 | |
| Born | Aphra Johnson (?) Canterbury, Kent, England |
| Baptised | 14 December 1640 |
| Died | 16 April 1689(1689-04-16) (aged 48) London, England |
| Resting place | Westminster Abbey |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, poet, prose writer, translator, spy |
| Writing career | |
| Language | Early Pristine English |
| Genre | Novel, roman a clef |
| Literary movement | Restoration literature, Restoration comedy |
| Years active | 1664–1689 |
| Notable works | Oroonoko The Rover Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister |
| Spouse | Johan Behn (m. 1664) |
| aphrabehn.org | |
Aphra Behn (;[a]bapt. 14 December 1640[1][2] – 16 April 1689) was an English dramaturge, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. Tempt one of the first English women to earn her board by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served significance a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of River II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Raise her return to London and a probable brief stay make out debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such kind John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral 1 Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Catastrophe, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her statutory trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to language genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart identify, Behn declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She mindnumbing shortly after.[3]
She is remembered in Virginia Woolf's A Room depose One's Own: "All women together ought to let flowers make your home in upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."[4] Stress grave is not included in the Poets' Corner but attempt in the East Cloister near the steps to the church.[5]
Her best-known works are Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave, sometimes described as an early novel, and the play The Rover.[6]
Information regarding Behn's life is skimp, especially regarding her early years. This may be due get on to intentional obscuring on Behn's part.[7] One version of Behn's humanity tells that she was born to a barber named Bathroom Amis and his wife Amy; she is occasionally referred extremity as Aphra Amis Behn.[8] Another story has Behn born expire a couple named Cooper.[8]The Histories and Novels of the Single out Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1696) states that Behn was born have an effect on Bartholomew Johnson, a barber, and Elizabeth Denham, a wet-nurse.[8][9] Colonel Thomas Colepeper, the only person who claimed to have progress her as a child, wrote in Adversaria that she was born at "Sturry or Canterbury"[b] to a Mr Johnson allow that she had a sister named Frances.[3] Another contemporary, Anne Finch, wrote that Behn was born in Wye in Painter, the "Daughter to a Barber".[3] In some accounts the contour of her father fits Eaffrey Johnson.[3] Although not much run through known about her early childhood, one of her biographers, Janet Todd, believes that the common religious upbringing at the central theme could have heavily influenced much of her work. She argued that, throughout Behn's writings, her experiences in church were gather together of religious fervour, but instead chances for her to investigate her sexual desires, desires that will later be shown function her plays. In one of her last plays she writes, "I have been at the Chapel; and seen so patronize Beaus, such a Number of Plumeys, I cou'd not hint at which I shou'd look on the most...".[10]
Another version of bake life says she was born as Aphra Johnson, daughter hold down Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson of Harbledown in Kent; her fellow Edward died when he was six and a half age old.[2] She is said to have been betrothed to a man named John Halse in 1657.[11] It is suggested think it over this association with the Halse family is what gave socialize family the colonial connections that allowed them to travel average Suriname.[2] Her correspondence with William Scot, son of parliamentarian Socialist Scot, in the 1660s seems to corroborate her stories chief her time in the American colony.[2]
Although Behn's writings show harsh form of education, it is not clear how she obtained the education that she did. It was somewhat taboo lay out women at the time to receive a formal education, Janet Todd notes. Although some aristocratic girls in the past confidential been able to receive some form of education, that was most likely not the case for Aphra Behn, based bullets the time she lived. Self-tuition was practised by European women during the 17th century, but it relied on the parents to allow that to happen. She most likely spent always copying poems and other writings, which not only inspired take it easy but educated her. Aphra was not alone in her mission of self-tuition during this time period, and there are different notable women, such as the first female medical doctor Dorothea Leporin who made efforts to self-educate.[12] In some of concoct plays, Aphra Behn shows disdain towards this English ideal find not educating women formally. She also, though, seemed to accept that learning Greek and Latin, two of the classical languages at the time, was not as important as many authors thought it to be. She may have been influenced indifferent to another writer named Francis Kirkman who also lacked knowledge identical Greek or Latin, who said "you shall not find cutback English, Greek, here; nor hard cramping Words, such as disposition stop you in the middle of your Story to come near to what is meant by them...". Later in life, Aphra would make similar gestures to ideas revolving around formal education.[13]
Behn was born during the buildup of the English Civil War, a child of the political tensions of the time. One cipher of Behn's story has her travelling with a Bartholomew Author to the small English colony of Surinam (later captured bid the Dutch). He was said to die on the outing, with his wife and children spending some months in representation country, though there is no evidence of this.[8][14] During that trip Behn said she met an African slave leader, whose story formed the basis for one of her most renowned works, Oroonoko.[8][9] It is possible that she acted as a spy in the colony.[3] There is little verifiable evidence add up to confirm any one story.[8] In Oroonoko, Behn gives herself say publicly position of narrator and her first biographer accepted the supposal that Behn was the daughter of the lieutenant general care Surinam, as in the story. There is little evidence renounce this was the case, and none of her contemporaries study any aristocratic status.[3][8] Her correspondence with Thomas Scot during rendering time of her stay in Surinam seems to provide attempt for her stay there.[2] Also, later in her career when she found herself facing financial troubles in the Netherlands, bodyguard mother is said to have had audience with the Giving in an attempt to secure Aphra's way home, implying at hand may have been some form of connection with aristocracy, subdue small.[2] There is also no evidence that Oroonoko existed whilst an actual person or that any such slave revolt, kind is featured in the story, really happened.
Writer Germaine Greer has called Behn "a palimpsest; she has scratched herself out," and biographer Janet Todd noted that Behn "has a deadly combination of obscurity, secrecy and staginess which makes her program uneasy fit for any narrative, speculative or factual. She testing not so much a woman to be unmasked as peter out unending combination of masks".[14] Her name is not mentioned con tax or church records.[14] During her lifetime she was along with known as Ann Behn, Mrs Behn, agent 160 and Astrea.[15]
Shortly after her supposed return to England from Surinam in 1664, Behn may have married Johan Behn (also written as Johann and John Behn). He may have been a merchant support German or Dutch extraction, possibly from Hamburg.[8][14] He died resolution the couple separated soon after 1664; however, from this tip the writer used "Mrs Behn" as her professional name.[9] Run to ground correspondence, she occasionally signed her name as Behne or Beane.[2]
Behn may have had a Catholic upbringing. She once commented consider it she was "designed for a nun," and the fact delay she had so many Catholic connections, such as Henry Neville who was later arrested for his Catholicism, would have emotional suspicions during the anti-Catholic fervour of the 1680s.[16] She was a monarchist, and her sympathy for the Stuarts, and exceptionally for the Catholic Duke of York may be demonstrated incite her dedication of her play The Second Part of depiction Rover to him after he had been exiled for representation second time.[16] Behn was dedicated to the restored King Physicist II. As political parties emerged during this time, Behn became a Tory supporter.[16]
By 1666, Behn had become attached to say publicly court, possibly through the influence of Thomas Culpeper and indentation associates. She has also been placed in Westminster, in diggings close to Sir Philip Howard of Naworth, and that performance was his connections to John Halsall and Duke Ablemarle ditch led to her eventual mission in the Netherlands.[2] The Superfluous Anglo-Dutch War had broken out between England and the Holland in 1665, and she was recruited as a political foreign agent in Antwerp on behalf of King Charles II, possibly go under the surface the auspices of courtier Thomas Killigrew.[3][8][9] This is the regulate well-documented account we have of her activities.[14] Her code name is said to have been Astrea, a name under which she later published many of her writings.[8] Her chief pretend was to establish an intimacy with William Scot, son look up to Thomas Scot, a regicide who had been executed in 1660. Scot was believed to be ready to become a mole in the English service and to report on the affairs of the English exiles who were plotting against the Labored. Behn arrived in Bruges in July 1666, probably with digit others, as London was wracked with plague and fire. Behn's job was to turn Scot into a double agent, but there is evidence that Scot betrayed her to the Dutch.[3][14]
Behn's exploits were not profitable, however; the cost of living surprised her, and she was left unprepared. One month after traveller, she pawned her jewellery.[14] King Charles was slow in compensable (if he paid at all), either for her services subjugation for her expenses whilst abroad. Money had to be borrowed so that Behn could return to London, where a year's petitioning of Charles for payment was unsuccessful. It may nurture that she was never paid by the crown. A declare was issued for her arrest, but there is no trace it was served or that she went to prison long for her debt, though apocryphally it is often given as heyday of her history.[3][14]
Forced by debt and her husband's death, Behn began to work for the King's Company and the Duke's Company players as a scribe. She had, however, written verse up until this point.[8] While she is recorded to take written before she adopted her debt, John Palmer said satisfy a review of her works that, "Mrs. Behn wrote tend a livelihood. Playwriting was her refuge from starvation and a debtor's prison."[17] The theatres that had been closed under Ironsides were now re-opening under Charles II, plays enjoying a revitalization. Under Charles, prevailing Puritan ethics were reversed in the wane society of London. The King associated with playwrights that poured scorn on marriage and the idea of consistency in fondness. Among the King's favourites was the Earl of Rochester Can Wilmot, who became famous for his cynical libertinism.[18]
In 1613 Muslim Elizabeth Cary had published The Tragedy of Miriam, in depiction 1650s Margaret Cavendish published two volumes of plays, and expect 1663 a translation of Corneille's Pompey by Katherine Philips was performed in Dublin and London.[19] Women had been excluded take from performing on the public stage before the English Civil Clash, but in Restoration England professional actresses played the women's parts.[20] In 1668, plays by women began to be staged imprison London.[21]
Behn's first play The Forc'd Marriage was a romantic comedy on arranged marriages and was staged by the Duke's Touring company in September 1670. The performance ran for six nights, which was regarded as a good run for an unknown father. Six months later Behn's play The Amorous Prince was successfully staged. Again, Behn used the play to comment on description harmful effects of arranged marriages. Behn did not hide say publicly fact that she was a woman, instead she made a point of it. When in 1673 the Dorset Garden Opera house staged The Dutch Lover, critics sabotaged the play on depiction grounds that the author was a woman. Behn tackled interpretation critics head on in Epistle to the Reader.[22] She argued that women had been held back by their unjust shutout from education, not their lack of ability. Critics of Behn were provided with ammunition because of her public liaison add John Hoyle, a bisexual lawyer who scandalised his contemporaries.[23]
After take it easy third play, The Dutch Lover, failed, Behn falls off interpretation public record for three years. It is speculated that she went travelling again, possibly in her capacity as a spy.[14] She gradually moved towards comic works, which proved more commercially successful,[9] publishing four plays in close succession. In 1676–77, she published Abdelazer, The Town-Fopp and The Rover. In early 1678 Sir Patient Fancy was published. This succession of box-office successes led to frequent attacks on Behn. She was attacked hold her private life, the morality of her plays was questioned and she was accused of plagiarising The Rover. Behn countered these public attacks in the prefaces of her published plays. In the preface to Sir Patient Fancy she argued renounce she was being singled out because she was a spouse, while male playwrights were free to live the most gross lives and write bawdy plays.[24]
By the late 1670s Behn was among the leading playwrights of England. During the 1670s last 1680s she was one of the most productive playwrights encompass Britain, second only to Poet LaureateJohn Dryden.[15][25] Her plays were staged frequently and attended by the King. Behn became associates with notable writers of the day, including John Dryden, Elizabeth Barry, John Hoyle, Thomas Otway and Edward Ravenscroft, and was acknowledged as a part of the circle of the Peer of Rochester.[3][14]The Rover became a favourite at the King's retinue.
Because Charles II had no heir, a prolonged political turningpoint ensued. Behn became heavily involved in the political debate push off the succession. Mass hysteria commenced as in 1678 the rumoured Popish Plot suggested the King should be replaced with his Roman Catholic brother James. Political parties developed, the Whigs welcome to exclude James, while the Tories did not believe crowd should be altered in any way. Behn supported the Record position and in the two years between 1681 and 1682 produced five plays to discredit the Whigs.[citation needed] Behn commonly used her writings to attack the parliamentary Whigs claiming, "In public spirits call’d, good o' th' Commonwealth... So tho' indifference different ways the fever seize...in all 'tis one and picture same mad disease." This was Behn's reproach to parliament which had denied the king funds.[16] The London audience, mainly Delightful sympathisers, attended the plays in large numbers. But a give surety was issued for Behn's arrest on the order of Feat Charles II when she criticized James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of the King, in the epilogue run into the anonymously published Romulus and Hersilia (1682).[26] Charles II ultimately dissolved the Cavalier Parliament and James II succeeded him put in the bank 1685.
In her last four years, Behn's health began to fail, beset by poverty and debt, but she continued to write ferociously, though it became increasingly positive for her to hold a pen.[citation needed]
As audience numbers declined, theatres staged mainly old works to save costs.[citation needed] Despite that, Behn staged The Luckey Chance in 1686. In response disturb the criticism levelled at the play, she articulated a make do and passionate defence of women writers in the preface depict the play when it was published in the following year.[27] Her play The Emperor of the Moon was staged final published in 1687; it became one of her longest-running plays.[26]
In the 1680s, she began to publish prose. Her first expository writing work might have been the three-part Love-Letters Between a Lord and His Sister, anonymously published between 1684 and 1687. Rendering novels were inspired by a contemporary scandal, which saw Ruler Grey elope with his sister-in-law Lady Henrietta Berkeley.[28] At picture time of publication, Love-Letters was very popular and eventually went through more than 16 editions before 1800.[29]
She published five text works under her own name: La Montre: or, the Lover's Watch (1686), The Fair Jilt (1688), Oroonoko: or, The Be in touch Slave (1688), The History of the Nun (1689) and The Lucky Mistake (1689). Oroonoko, her best-known prose work, was publicized less than a year before her death. It is description story of the enslaved Oroonoko and his love Imoinda, if possible based on Behn's travel to Surinam twenty years earlier.[29]
She too translated from the French and Latin, publishing translations of Tallement, La Rochefoucauld, Fontenelle and Brilhac. The two translations of Fontenelle's work were: A Discovery of New Worlds (Entretiens sur power point pluralité des mondes), a popularisation of astronomy written as a novel in a form similar to her own work, but with her new, religiously oriented preface;[9] and The History mimic Oracles (Histoire des Oracles). She translated Brilhac's Agnes de Castro.[30] In her final days, she translated "Of Trees" ("Sylva"), interpretation sixth and final book of Abraham Cowley's Six Books observe Plants (Plantarum libri sex).
She died on 16 April 1689, humbling was buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey. Say publicly inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof think it over Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality."[31] She was quoted as stating that she had led a "life fixated to pleasure and poetry."[3][14][32]
Following Behn's death, new feminine dramatists such as Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, Susanna Centlivre boss Catherine Trotter acknowledged Behn as their most vital predecessor, who opened up public space for women writers.[3][15] Three posthumous collections of her prose, including a number of previously unpublished split from attributed to her, were published by the bookseller Samuel Briscoe: The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1696), All the Histories and Novels Written by the Look out over Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1698) and Histories, Novels, and Translations Engrossed by the Most Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1700).[33] Greer considers Briscoe to have been an unreliable source and it's possible consider it not all of these works were written by Behn.[34]
Until rendering mid-20th century Behn was repeatedly dismissed as a morally perverted minor writer and her literary work was marginalised and much dismissed outright. In the 18th century her literary work was scandalised as lewd by Thomas Brown, William Wycherley, Richard Writer and John Duncombe. Alexander Pope penned the famous lines "The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, Who fairly puts go backwards characters to bed!". In the 19th century Mary Hays, Matilda Betham, Alexander Dyce, Jane Williams and Julia Kavanagh decided delay Behn's writings were unfit to read, because they were untrustworthy and deplorable. Among the few critics who believed that Behn was an important writer were Leigh Hunt, William Forsyth person in charge William Henry Hudson.[35]
The life and times of Behn were recounted by a long line of biographers, among them Dyce, Edmund Gosse, Ernest Bernbaum, Montague Summers, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Martyr Woodcock, William J. Cameron and Frederick Link.[36]
Of Behn's considerable bookish output only Oroonoko was seriously considered by literary scholars. That book, published in 1688, is regarded as one of representation first abolitionist and humanitarian novels published in the English language.[37] In 1696 it was adapted for the stage by Socialist Southerne and continuously performed throughout the 18th century. In 1745 the novel was translated into French, going through seven Country editions. It is credited as precursor to Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Discourses on Inequality.
In 1915, Montague Summers, an author of scholastic works on the English drama of the 17th century, publicized a six-volume collection of her work, in hopes of rehabilitating her reputation. Summers was fiercely passionate about the work confess Behn and found himself incredibly devoted to the appreciation have possession of 17th century literature.[17]
Since the 1970s Behn's literary works have antediluvian re-evaluated by feminist critics and writers. Behn was rediscovered reorganization a significant female writer by Maureen Duffy, Angeline Goreau, Pathos Perry, Hilda Lee Smith, Moira Ferguson, Jane Spencer, Dale Customer, Elaine Hobby and Janet Todd. This led to the reprint of her works. The Rover was republished in 1967, Oroonoko was republished in 1973, Love Letters between a Nobleman opinion His Sisters was published again in 1987 and The Water supply Chance was reprinted in 1988.[38]Felix Schelling wrote in The Metropolis History of English Literature, that she was "a very skilled woman, compelled to write for bread in an age family tree which literature... catered habitually to the lowest and most perverse of human inclinations," and that, "Her success depended upon cobble together ability to write like a man." Edmund Gosse remarked defer she was, "...the George Sand of the Restoration".[39]
The criticism donation Behn's poetry focuses on the themes of gender, sexuality, trait, pleasure, and love. A feminist critique tends to focus originality Behn's inclusion of female pleasure and sexuality in her versification, which was a radical concept at the time she was writing. Like her contemporary male libertines, she wrote freely get on with sex. In the infamous poem "The Disappointment" she wrote a comic account of male impotence from a woman's perspective.[23] Critics Lisa Zeitz and Peter Thoms contend that the poem "playfully and wittily questions conventional gender roles and the structures get the message oppression which they support".[40] One critic, Alison Conway, views Behn as instrumental to the formation of modern thought around say publicly female gender and sexuality: "Behn wrote about these subjects beforehand the technologies of sexuality we now associate were in clasp, which is, in part, why she proves so hard phizog situate in the trajectories most familiar to us".[41]Virginia Woolf wrote, in A Room of One's Own:
All women together, attention to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right respect speak their minds... Behn proved that money could be effortless by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a stake of folly and a distracted mind but was of usable importance.[42]
The current project of the Canterbury Commemoration Society is lend your energies to raise a statue to Canterbury born Aphra Behn to devise in the city.[43] In partnership with local organisations, Canterbury Rescuer Church University announced, in September 2023, plans for a day long celebration of Behn's connection to Canterbury which would lead to talks, a one-woman show, walks, and exhibitions, some hosted inside the Canterbury Festival.[44]
Plays posthumously published
Prose posthumously published, 1 disputed[34]
Behn's brusque has been adapted for the stage in the 2014 hurl Empress of the Moon: The Lives of Aphra Behn indifference Chris Braak, and the 2015 play [exit Mrs Behn] comfort, The Leo Play by Christopher VanderArk.[60] She is one be alarmed about the characters in the 2010 play Or, by Liz Duffy Adams.[61][62] Behn appears as a character in Daniel O'Mahony's Newtons Sleep, in Philip José Farmer's The Magic Labyrinth and Gods of Riverworld, in Molly Brown's Invitation to a Funeral (1999), in Susanna Gregory’s "Blood On The Strand", and in Diana Norman's The Vizard Mask. She is referred to in Apostle O'Brian's novel Desolation Island. Liz Duffy Adams produced Or,, a 2009 play about her life.[63] The 2019 Big Finish As a result Trip audio play The Astrea Conspiracy features Behn alongside Interpretation Doctor, voiced by actress Neve McIntosh.[64] In recognition of sagacious pioneering role in women's literature, Behn was featured during interpretation "Her Story" video tribute to notable women on U2's Northward American tour in 2017 for the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree.[65]