THE PLAYS, HISTORIES, AND NOVELS OF THE INGENIOUS ...; With Life and Memoirs. Complete in six volumes

London: John Pearson, 1871. Facsimile of the 1724 third edition. Bound with a frontispiece in contemporary 3/4 calf and marble boards (some rubbed an chipped) but a very good set. CBEL II, 417. Item #56329

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was the first professional female writer and the first women whose writing won her burial in Westminster Abey. She was probably born in Kent the daughter of Bartholomew and Elizabeth Denham Johnson. She traveled to Surinam in 1663-1664 and married a Dutch merchant who died of the plague in 1665. In 1666 she served as an agent for the British government as she was sent to Antwerp to gather information about exiled Cromwellians and to relay Dutch military plans. She believed in the right for women to have education, work and to love whomever they chose, in or out of marriage. She first achieved literary celebrity as a playwrite, entering the theatre in 1660 where she produced more than 17 plays. Her speciality was the "Spanish comedy" of intrigue, where she manipulates a number of couples into a complexity of intrigues, mistaken identities, duels, practical jokes and the rest.. Her best known play is The Rover (1677) set in Naples. A number of her plays deal with her central theme, an attack on forced marriages. In her later years she wrote fiction, producing more than a dozen novels.

Price: $600.00 save 20% $480.00

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