author
Aphra Behn
1640–1689
A pioneering voice of the Restoration, this playwright, poet, and prose writer became one of the first English women known to make a living by her pen. Best remembered today for bold stage comedies and the novella Oroonoko, she wrote with unusual freedom about power, gender, and desire.
7 Audiobooks
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume IV
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume II
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume VI
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume III
by Aphra Behn
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume V
by Aphra Behn
About the author
Born in the early 1640s and baptized on December 14, 1640, Aphra Behn lived through the lively and often turbulent world of Restoration England. Much about her early life remains uncertain, but scholars broadly agree that she became a rare professional woman writer in a period when that path was largely closed to women.
Behn wrote plays, poems, fiction, and translations, and she built a remarkable career on that work. She is especially known for her comedies for the London stage and for Oroonoko (1688), a short novel that has remained one of her best-known works. Her writing often explored love, politics, colonialism, and the limits placed on women, and later generations came to see her as an important literary trailblazer.
She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Her reputation has risen strongly over time: once criticized for being too daring, she is now widely read as a major figure in English literature and an early example of a woman claiming an independent life through writing.