Let Flowers Fall Upon the Tomb of Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn
July 1640 - April 16, 1689, London

Esteemed as a writer in her own time, upon her death, Behn was buried in the East cloister of Westminster Abbey. In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf wrote that all women should "let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/behn.html

Aphra Behn broke every rule. She was a spy, she was a writer, she was thrown in prison several times for her debts and her politics, she may or may not have been married and she had a live-in lover for nine years.

Her origin a mystery, an unidentified child named Aphra traveled with a couple named Amis to Surinam (Dutch Guiana), then an English possession. Upon her return to England around the time of the Restoration, she may have married a London merchant named Behn. Her wit and beauty caught the eye of the royal court and she was employed by Charles II in secret service in The Netherlands. Unrewarded, and imprisoned for debt, she began to write to support herself.

From 1670 until her death in 1689, Aphra Behn enjoyed commercial triumph. Her witty, vivacious comedies, such as The Rover (two parts, produced 1677 and 1681) and The Lucky Chance, were highly successful. She was well read, fluent in French and Italian with some Spanish, and she often adapted work by older dramatists. Her versatility, like her output, was immense, and in her day was rivaled only by that of her friend and colleague, John Dryden.

Aphra Behn is considered the first professional English woman writer and originator of the novel in its modern form. This honor is often bestowed on Daniel Defoe, but Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688)(based on her stay with an English colony in Surinam in 1664) predates Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). Her most famous play is The Rover (1677), which is still being seen today in productions all over the world. Her gifts as a poet, playwright and novelist earned her the sobriquet "The Incomparable Astrea."

http://www.nyct.net/cosmicleopard/Behn_bio.html

Read her works on line:
http://www.lit-arts.net/Behn/docs.htm