Behn, Aphra, n�e Johnson 1640-89
English writer and adventuress

Born in Wye, Kent, she was brought up in Surinam, where she made the acquaintance of the enslaved Negro prince Oroonoko, the subject afterwards of one of her novels, in which she anticipated Jean Jacques Rousseau's 'noble savage'. Returning to England in 1663, she married a merchant called Behn, who died within three years. She then turned professional spy at Antwerp, sent back political and naval information, but received little thanks, and on her return was imprisoned for debt. She turned to writing, as perhaps the first professional woman author in England, and wrote many coarse but popular Restoration plays, especially The Forced Marriage (1670), The Rover (1678), and The Feigned Courtizans (1678), and later published Oroonoko (1688).

Bibliography: G Woodcock, The Incomparable Aphra (1948)