Oroonoko: the Royal Slave: Souls Needed for You
About this ebook
FINIS.
Cross-References
FINIS.
THE FAIR JILT.
INTRODUCTION.
The Story of Prince Henrick.
INTRODUCTION.
EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
Cross-Reference
AGNES DE CASTRO.
INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
FINIS.
THE LUCKY MISTAKE.
TO GEORGE GREENVIEL, ESQ;
INTRODUCTION.
Cross-Reference
THE WANDERING BEAUTY.
THE WANDERING BEAUTY.
FINIS.
THE UNHAPPY MISTAKE, and c.
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About the author
Aphra Behn (14 December 1640? – 16 April 1689) was a British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable, brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.
She is famously remembered in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "All women together ought to let flowers fall 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.". Her grave is not included in the Poets' Corner but lies in the East Cloister near the steps to the church.
