AUTHORS: APHRA BEHN

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She wrote plays performed well into the eighteenth century, poems, lyrics, and fiction. She translated and edited. On her death in 1689 she was buried in Westminster Abbey, not in the church proper, but in the cloister. We are not completely sure of her first name. Yet Aphra Behn was a published and performed author in a time when to be a woman and probably a Catholic put her not only in the margins, but off the page of literary existence. O'Connell (English, Manhattan College) has dusted off and examined over 1,700 primary and secondary bibliographic pieces by and about Behn. She includes in the primary bibliography the complete works of Behn, works she translated or edited, works written or edited by others with her works, attributions with some validity, and other attributions or works containing attributions. In the secondary bibliography she lists criticism and other references from Behn's time to 2002. The appendices include the works in chronological order, along with lists of Behn's contributions in other works, a first-line index, lists of actors named in printed copies, provenance of examined copies, and a list of works consulted. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

British playwright Behn (1640-89) often portrayed rape or attempted rape and the ability of women to escape the situation, but because the plays are comedies, they perforce must end happily, which means in marriage and thus the continuation of patriarchal order. Therefore, some see Behn as a feminist and others as an anti-feminist. Steward (theatre, U. of Pittsburgh-Johnstown) deconstructs and analyzes both interpretations, working from patterns and evolutions in the plays, and argues that Behn presents a women's view of women in distress as vulnerable but not without recourse and resources, and as able to forgive the wrong done her and get on with life. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Royalist Women Writers aims to put women back on the map of seventeenth-century royalist literature from which they have habitually been marginalized. Looking in detail at the work of Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and Aphra Behn, it argues that their writings inaugurate a more assertive model of the Englishwoman as literary author, which is crucially enabled by their royalist affiliations. Chalmers reveals new political sub-texts in the three writers' work and shows how these inflect their representations of gender. In this way both their texts and manner of presenting themselves as authors emerges as freshly pertinent to their male and female royalist contemporaries for whom supporting them could be an act of political self-definition.

Aphra Behn, now becoming recognized as a major Restoration figure, is especially significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer. This book analyses her reception as a poet, a novelist, and a dramatist, demonstrating her far-reaching influence on eighteenth-century literature and on the formation of the English literary canon.

This is the first study of the posthumous life of Aphra Behn, the extraordinary vicissitudes of her critical reception, and the personal vilifications of her reputation through three centuries. Beginning with the reception of Behn's work during her lifetime, which she herself helped to orchestrate by performing herself as a seductive woman, a beleaguered lady writer, and a serious intellectual, among other roles, the work ends with the late 20th-century reception of Behn, when the interest in gender, race, and class has made of her almost a postmodern writer. In the 17th century she was seen as a playwright of sexy and propagandist comedies, and attacked by those who disapproved her supposedly unfeminine stance and her royalist politics. Later, as the Restoration period itself fell into disrepute, Behn's plays were denigrated along with those of her fellow men, but greater opprobrium fell on her as a woman, because in the 19th century it was felt that a female writer should have higher morals than a man. During this period, Behn's reputation was exceedingly low, while her short story Oroonoko gained acclaim, freed from any association with its author or her supposedly squalid times. In the 18th and 19th centuries Oroonoko moved from being viewed as political commentary and heroic romance to a sentimental tale of doomed love and then an abolitionist text. In the early twentieth century it was hailed as one of the earliest realist texts, part of the great English ascent into the novel.JANET TODD is professor of English at the University of East Anglia.

A study of Aphra Behn's drama, fiction, poetry and translation, as well as other aspects of her life, from her publishing struggles to her involvement in American slavery.

Contains electronic resources for researchers in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Enables users to access citations in journal, book, and reviews databases; provides online access to Paul Oskar Krisetller's Iter Italicum (a finding list of Renaissance humanistic manuscripts); provides access to the International Directory of Scholars (a comprehensive directory of contact information, and information on the research and teaching careers of scholars around the world).

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