Despite this, it was interesting to read a novel that's remained more or less relevant for over 300 years, and which paved the way for many later authors of the eighteenth century. I went into it with low expectations - I've never enjoyed a single book that was published before 'Pride and Prejudice' - so I wasn't surprised to find myself praying for it to end by the eleventh page. I read this book because I was interested to see what Behn - the first known professional female writer - had to offer. She was, as Edmund Gosse remarked, 'the George Sand of the Restoration,' and she lived the Bohemian life in London in the seventeenth century as George Sand lived it in Paris in the nineteenth. Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man.'. catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations. furiously resented.' She was, as Felix Shelling said, 'a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature. for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.' Vita Sackville-West called Behn 'an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them.

Woolf wrote, 'All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn. In author Virginia Woolf's reckoning, Behn's total career is more important than any particular work it produced. Along with Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, she is sometimes referred to as part of 'The fair triumvirate of wit.' Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature. Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers.

Oroonoko by Aphra Behn