The Secret Life of Aphra Behn - Hardcover

Janet Todd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813524555 ISBN 13: 9780813524559

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Aphra Behn (1640?-1689) lived and died with the Restoration, with whose licence and liberty she became synonymous. The first woman to earn her living from writing, she composed at least nineteen plays, fiction, poetry and translations, and travelled as a spy to Holland and possibly to Surinam in South America on behalf of Charles II's government. This definitive biography is the first to draw on Behn's complete works and newly discovered documents in Britain and the Netherlands. Behn is a mass of contradictions: a high Tory who disliked traditional power structures; a powerful, autonomous woman who depended on men's approval; a woman who desired men and women and who became involved in intense political activity, yet craved case. This readable, fast-paced book uncovers Behn's assertive, duplicitous, sensual character and illustrates the openly erotic nature of her writings, her explorations of desire, sexual excitement and disappointment, which later made her a byword for lewdness. It reveals historical sources and court cases behind some of her most famous 'fictions'. As well as recounting Behn's story. The Secret Life of Aphra Behn illuminates the political and social background of the period, the court intrigue, the theatre and its protagonists, London life before and after the Restoration, the Popish Plot, and the Monmouth Rebellion. Behn's relationships with Dryden and Rochester, the Stuart kings, Nell Gwyn, the Duchess of Mazarine and many others make her story a fascinating combination of literature, politics, sex and intrigue.

About this title

Review:

Shelf Awareness (07/21/2017): Aphra Behn was a 17th-century playwright, poet, translator, propagandist and spy, and one of the first English women successfully to support herself as a professional writer. She was an iconoclast who expressed many radical political, religious and sexual ideas through her work. Aphra Behn: A Secret Life is a revised and updated reissue of the 1996 biography by Janet Todd (A Man of Genius), the British scholar, biographer and novelist. Behn is a tricky subject for any biographer. Very little was written about her by anyone who knew her. As a professional artist, she intentionally invented and hid behind her public image. Todd calls her "a lethal combination of obscurity, secrecy and staginess... not so much a woman to be unmasked as an unending combination of masks and intrigue." In addition, despite her many radical convictions, she was a strongly anti-democratic Royalist, and her ideas did not line up neatly with modern definitions of social liberalism or feminism. However, Todd thoroughly understands the particular cultural and political environment of the Restoration. She traces a convincing and entertaining path through the likely events of Behn's life in the vivid context of her times, examining the evidence and alternatives for every possibility and providing close readings of her works. Her approach creates an effective mixture of historical research, literary criticism and fiction that brings us as close as we may ever get to the truth of this enterprising and enigmatic literary figure. COPYRIGHT(2017) Shelf Awareness, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

About the Author:

Janet Todd was born in Wales and grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Sri Lanka. She has worked in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, Scotland and England. In the US, at the University of Florida and Douglass College, Rutgers, she began the first journal devoted to women s writing. She has published on the novel and memoir and written biographies of Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters Fanny and Mary Shelley, and the Irish Lady Mount Cashell. A Professor Emerita at the University of Aberdeen and Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Janet Todd is a former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, where she established the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. She has published two novels: Lady Susan Plays the Game and A Man of Genius. She lives in Cambridge and Venice."

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0813524555
• ISBN 13: 9780813524559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 453