Aphra Behn is not a name most students of literature would readily recognize. Her work is rarely included as part of the traditional western canon, overshadowed often by the male poets of the early modern English period—William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, etc. However, Behn was one of the first women to work and earn a living as a professional writer. She wrote across a number of genres, including poetry, plays, and prose, and was even politically involved in the court of Charles II after the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660.
Behn was a prolific playwright during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Her most famous play, Oronooko, was originally a work of prose fiction. It tells the story of an African prince who is tricked into slavery and sold to European colonists. Despite its subject matter, the text is often interpreted as a commentary on the nature of kingship and royalty rather than on the subject of race, given that at the time of its popularity, James II had assumed the throne and reinvigorated talks of rebellion with his Catholic ancestry. Behn, therefore, is known both as a pioneer for women writers but also as a notable political writer during a fraught time in English history.
Virginia Woolf famously said in her essay 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." Woolf's feminist interpretation of Behn's legacy inspired new appreciation for her work, and her poems, plays, and fiction have begun receiving more critical attention from scholars and students alike.
