{\b Aphra Behn}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: July 1640 

{\b Date of Death}.: 16 April 1689

{\b Works}.

English dramatist, novelist and poet. 
She wrote eighteen plays of which the first was the tragi-comic The Forced 
Marriage (1670), followed by The Amorous Prince (1671).  Others include her 
only tragedy, Abdelazar (1676), The Rover (1677), The Second Part of The Rover 
(1681)  and various political comedies such as The Roundheads. Particularly 
(1682)  noteworthy also is her farce The Emperor of the Moon (1687). Her novels 
(1683)  include Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister and Oroonoko the 
(1684)  story of an enslaved African prince which proved a major influence on the 
(1685)  development of the novel.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Fair Jilt', 'The Royal Slave', 'Song, from "Abdelazar"', 'Song', 'Song', 'The 
Coquet', 'Song, from "The Banished Cavalier"', 'The Prospect and Bower of Bliss', 
'Beneath a Cool Shade'.

{\b General Comment}.

As a young woman, Aphra Behn travelled to Surinam, a British colony, with her 
family around 1663-1664. She married in 1664, but her husband died shortly 
afterwards, possibly in the Great Plague. Aphra Behn acted as an agent for 
Charles II in the Dutch war of 1666 but in the late 1660s was imprisoned for debt
. With no other means of support she turned to writing for her keep and was the 
first  English woman to earn her living in this way. Her plays and novels often 
centre on the consequences of arranged and ill-matched marriages and the sale of 
young women in marriage to older men. 
As a staunch Royalist in a period of bitter power struggles many of her plays are 
political. Her plays were very popular at the time, particularly The Rover, 
though currently she is chiefly respected for her novels.