Aphra Behn

From Philosopedia

Behn, Aphra (1640?—1689)

Said by Vita Sackville-West to be the first English novelist to have supported herself by writing, Behn probably was the daughter of a barber called Johnson, was born in Kent, and little else is known about her early life.

The Rover (1677) was humorous and bawdy, perhaps based on John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), for she was associated with his circle.

Oroonoko (1688), based on her experiences in Surinam, is said to have been the first English philosophical novel - it was about an enslaved African prince and one of the first anti-slavery works in the English language. In her early 20s, she had visited Surinam and on her return married merchant Johann Behn, who died two year later.

Although married several times and widowed early, Behn had a relationship with John Hoyle, a gay man who was the center of many scandals. She was a friend of Nell Gwyn, the King’s mistress.

Known as “the incomparable Astrea,” the name she used when she was Charles II’s spy in Antwerp, she wrote homoerotic verse and was a dramatist at a time when women were just beginning to act in the theatres. In The Golden Age, Behn wrote, “[T]he gods, by teaching us religion first, first set the world at odds.”

Behn's tombstone, in Westminster Abbey, reads: "MRS APHRA BEHN DYED APRIL 16 A.D. 1689. Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality."

(See Janet Todd's 1996 The Secret Life of Aphra Behn.

{TYD; CE; GL; Vita Sackville-West}