APHRA BEHN
Aphra Behn by Mary Beale, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dates: ca.1640-1689
Nationality: British/English
Literary Periods:
Neoclassical Period, 1660-1785
Restoration Period, 1660-1700
PROFESSOR JANET TODD
Janet Todd is a major Aphra Behn scholar and the Herbert JC Grierson Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. Explore some of her work below.
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Aphra Behn Studies (1996) by Aphra Behn was England's first professional woman writer, but her status as a major author has only recently become clear. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Behn was denigrated for her 'unwomanly' subject matter and intellectual immodesty. In the twentieth century she has been increasingly viewed as an important dramatist and poet of the Restoration and a founder of the English novel. This book sets Behn firmly in an historical context of political factions, theatre developments and colonial encounters, and includes chapters on each of the genres in which she wrote: drama, fiction, poetry and translation, and on other aspects of her life, from her publishing struggles to her involvement in American slavery. It is an important resource for those studying seventeenth-century English literature and drama, and to those interested in the development of women's writing.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 A64 1996ISBN: 0521471699 -
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2004) by Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. She provided more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground-breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn's work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. This Companion discusses and introduces her writings in all these fields and provides the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. It also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 C36 2004ISBN: 0521820197 -
The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn (1998) by 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.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 T64 1998ISBN: 1571131655 -
The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (1997) by #Originally published: London : A. Deutsch, 1996.#Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.Call Number: Miller PS3317.Z5 T64 1997ISBN: 0813524555 -
REFERENCE & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Scribner Writers Series
Essay on the life and works of Aphra Behn, ccomplete works and suggested reading bibliographies
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RESEARCH & CRITICISM
Find books, essays and journal articles in MLA International Bibliography
MLA International Bibliography is the definitive literary research database, indexing the most authoritative scholarship on Aphra Behn from books and academic journals. MLA indexes and links to the entire JSTOR literary research collection as well as linking to many other full-text providers.
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ITER Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance [DATABASE]Books and journal articles on topics related to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
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The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2004) by Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. She provided more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground-breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn's work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. This Companion discusses and introduces her writings in all these fields and provides the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. It also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 C36 2004ISBN: 0521820197
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Aphra Behn (2004) by This annotated bibliography constitutes a thoroughly revised and more easily readable study of Behn's publications, of those edited or translated by her, of publications that included her works, and of writings ascribed to her, along with an annotated bibliography of over 1600 works about her from 1671 to 2001, with an unannotated update covering 2002. The augmented primary bibliography describes all known editions and issues of her works to 1702, and adds a catalogue of editions to 2002, including on-line sources. The secondary bibliography adds close to 1000 items published since 1984 to the original 600 of the first edition along with about 175 more from 1671 to 1984, with attention to materials not in English. New appendices include a list of dedicatees, actors, recent productions (with reviews), and provenances. This volume will be invaluable for book dealers, collectors and librarians, as well as students and scholars of Aphra Behn and of Restoration literature.Call Number: Bates PR3317.Z5 O36 2003ISBN: 0754600998 -
The Ravishing Restoration (2010) by Ann Marie Stewart is currently a professor of theatre at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. She holds a BA and a MA in Theatre and English from Michigan State University, and a PhD in Theatre History from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has also taught and directed in theatre departments at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Colorado, and Olivet College. She has published articles on Renaissance and Restoration drama, and is interested in the dramatic evolution of playwriting by British and American women throughout the centuries.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 S75 2010ISBN: 9781575911342 -
Royalist Women Writers, 1650-1689 (2004) by 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.Call Number: E-BookISBN: 0199273278 -
Aphra Behn's Afterlife (2001) by Aphra Behn, now becoming recognized as a major Restoration figure, is especially significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer: an important and often troubling role-model for later generations of women. This book shows that her influence on eighteenth-centuryliterature was far-reaching. Because literary history was (and to an extent still is) based on notions of patrilineal succession, it has been difficult to recognize the generative work of women's texts among male writers. This book suggests that Behn had 'sons' as well as 'daughters' and argues thatwe need a feminist revision of the notion of literary influence. Behn's reputation was very different in different genres. The book analyses her reception as a poet, a novelist, and a dramatist, showing how reactions to her became an important part of the creation of the English literarycanon.Call Number: Bates & Bowdoin PR3317.Z5 S64 2000ISBN: 0198184948 -
The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn (1998) by 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.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 T64 1998ISBN: 1571131655
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Aphra Behn Studies (1996) by Aphra Behn was England's first professional woman writer, but her status as a major author has only recently become clear. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Behn was denigrated for her 'unwomanly' subject matter and intellectual immodesty. In the twentieth century she has been increasingly viewed as an important dramatist and poet of the Restoration and a founder of the English novel. This book sets Behn firmly in an historical context of political factions, theatre developments and colonial encounters, and includes chapters on each of the genres in which she wrote: drama, fiction, poetry and translation, and on other aspects of her life, from her publishing struggles to her involvement in American slavery. It is an important resource for those studying seventeenth-century English literature and drama, and to those interested in the development of women's writing.Call Number: Miller PR3317.Z5 A64 1996ISBN: 0521471699
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PRIMARY SOURCES: TEXTS
The Works of Aphra Behn edited by Janet Todd (1992)
This seven volume work is available in Miller Library PR3317 .A6 1992
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Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1999) by Including the full text of Aphra Behn's novella Oroonoko, this volume explores its global historical context through a number of literary, philosophical, and historical texts designed to place the work in a literary history as well as a relational history of the three regions the story unites: West Africa, The Caribbean, and England. Documents from each corner of the "Triangular Trade", such as slave trader correspondence, travel accounts from Surinam, and legal decisions concerning slavery in England, combine to add to the richness of this earliest literary narrative written in English about an American colony.Call Number: Miller PR3317 O7 2000ISBN: 0312210655
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Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowAphra Behn collection
Transcriptions of EEBO texts -
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new windowAphra Behn collection
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Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new windowA database of English-language literature, containing thousands of full-text works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, as well as journals, author biographies, bibliographies, criticism, and reference resources.
PRIMARY SOURCES: NEWSPAPERS
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17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearch for Aphra Behn
PRIMARY SOURCES: ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
"The Bodleian Library at Oxford has a manuscript copy of Behn's play, The Younger Brother. The Public Record Office in London has letters and documents regarding Behn's assignment as a spy for King Charles II in Antwerp. There are no other known papers or manuscripts surviving." -DLB