Trivial Biographies: December 2010

NAME Aphra Behn

WHAT FAMOUS FOR She was the first woman in England to earn her living as a professional writer, producing plays, poems, and novels.

BIRTH Aphra Behn was baptised on December 14, 1640 at St Michael's Church, Harbledown, near Canterbury, Kent. The parish register records her baptism as "Eafry, d. of Bartholemew Johnson and Elizabeth, Harballdowne".

FAMILY BACKGROUND She was the daughter of Bartholomew Johnson, a barber and yeoman from Bishopsbourne, and Elizabeth Denham (formerly Dunham), a wet-nurse from a 'light aristocratic' Faversham family. Her father was described as a drunk who was often before the courts and repeatedly applied for freedom of the city of Canterbury to set up as a barber, but was refused by the mayor at least three times. Despite this, he operated an illegal barber's shop in Canterbury, undercutting his contemporaries. She had a brother named Edward who died when he was six and a half years old. Her foster brother was Thomas Colepeper.

CHILDHOOD Little is securely known about Behn's childhood. At the time of her birth, Harbledown's population was no more than 180, consisting of a small hamlet of farms and cottages along the London-Canterbury-Dover road. These were troubled times, with Parliament and King Charles I increasingly at loggerheads, and the outbreak of the Civil War only eighteen months away. It is suggested that whilst still a child, Eafry was taken by her parents to Surinam, then an English colony on the edge of the South American mainland, where she stayed until 1658 when the colony was handed to the Dutch. She may have been betrothed to a man named John Halse in 1657.

EDUCATION Despite her humble origins, Behn gained a good education, likely because of her mother's position as a wet-nurse to aristocratic families. She learned to write in an immaculate hand, speak and write French, and had some knowledge of Latin, as well as learning to dance and sing. However, she had no formal higher education. One biographer suggests that her common religious upbringing could have heavily influenced much of her work, with her experiences in church being more about exploring sexual desires than religious fervour.

CAREER RECORD 1668, Behn was recruited by King Charles II to serve as a spy in Antwerp.

1669 After returning to London and falling into debt, she began writing for the stage.

APPEARANCE Contemporary portraits such as by Anglo-Dutch artist Sir Peter Lely show Behn with an oval face, almond-shaped eyes, a long straight nose and a slight double chin. Her hair was chestnut brown and neatly dressed in ringlets adorned with pearls. Her eyes were of a similar brown hue to her hair, and she had clear pale skin complemented by lightly rouged cheeks. She appears as a modest yet fashionable woman of her day, accessorised with fabrics and ornaments that speak to a genteel and prosperous status.

Aphra Behn by Peter Lely c1670

FASHION Behn dressed fashionably for her era, wearing gowns typical of the 1670s and 1680s. In portraits, she appears in a tawny red or russet dress of stiff silk-like fabric, worn over a white shift and held in place by three sets of clasps set with precious stones (possibly diamonds, though they may have been paste). She wore a shawl of olive green fabric draped over her shoulder. Given her celebrity status in theatre circles, much of any money she made was likely spent on clothes and books to maintain her fashionable appearance.

CHARACTER Aphra Behn was fiercely independent, witty, and often described as having a "lethal combination of obscurity, secrecy, and staginess." She was a staunch Royalist and a political propagandist. In her personal morality, she was libertarian, believing that sexual conduct was a private matter. Critics often hailed her as “the Ingenious Mrs Behn” while opponents condemned her as a "lewd harlot" due to the frank and erotic themes in her writing. (1)

Contemporary accounts suggest she was quite talkative among friends but secretive about autobiographical details. She was characterised as somewhat naive and more easily fooled by false sincerity than someone of her experience should have been.

SPEAKING VOICE Her talkative nature among friends suggests she was an engaging conversationalist.

SENSE OF HUMOUR Behn's plays were known for their wit, verve, and bawdy comedies filled with libertines, harlots, and foolish characters. She challenged gender hierarchy making her female characters superior to male ones in laughter-raising situations.

RELATIONSHIPS Behn married Johan Behn, a foreign merchant of Dutch or German parentage, around 1664, but the marriage did not last long and he died (possibly of plague) only a few years later. Her most significant relationship was with John Hoyle, a bisexual republican lawyer whom she met in the 1670s. Their relationship was tumultuous and was considered the "dominating one" in her life. Hoyle was openly republican, a follower of Thomas Hobbes, and had a violent past, having stabbed an unarmed watchmaker to death in 1663.

She also had other male lovers throughout her lifetime, most notably a man allegorised as "Amintas" in her verses.

She wrote explicitly of her attractions to women as well, including a poem "To The Fair Clarinda" addressed to a female lover.

Behn was associated with the literary coterie that included John Wilmot, Lord Rochester, and enjoyed a warm professional friendship with John Dryden.

MONEY AND FAME Despite her success, Behn was frequently in financial difficulties. Her spying missions were unprofitable, leaving her in debt and briefly imprisoned in debtors' prison. Even after becoming a successful playwright, Behn was always short of money. She was forced to pawn her rings to pay expenses during her Antwerp mission. In her final years, she was making enough money to get by but likely spent it on socialising and maintaining the fashionable appearance necessary for London theatre circles. There does not appear to have been a will when she died, suggesting she had no property to leave.

FOOD AND DRINK Her fictional narrator in Oroonoko describes having Oroonoko and Imoinda often dining at her table, suggesting she enjoyed entertaining guests.

As a woman of the theatre and courtly world, she would have been familiar with the taverns, coffeehouses, and dining habits of Restoration London.

MUSIC AND ARTS Behn was deeply embedded in the artistic world of Restoration London. She associated with the circle of the Earl of Rochester and was friends with other famous libertines and poets. She worked closely with theatre companies and knew leading actors and actresses of the day, including Nell Gwyn who appeared in her play The Rover.

WRITING CAREER Aphra Behn more or less stumbled into literary history by accident. Having been dispatched to Antwerp in 1668 to do a spot of spying for Charles II—a job that, rather unhelpfully, came without a salary—she returned home broke and briefly incarcerated for debt. With few other options, she turned to writing. In doing so, she became the first Englishwoman to make a living entirely from her pen, which is rather like being the first person to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat: everyone said it couldn’t be done, but she went ahead and did it anyway.

She began with the stage, her maiden effort The Forc’d Marriage making its debut in 1671. Over the next twenty years she produced play after play—comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies—tossing them out with a speed and regularity that would make modern dramatists blanch. Her biggest hit was The Rover (1677), which audiences adored and critics often sniffed at, largely because it was written by a woman and contained an unnerving amount of candour about sex, love, and other things polite society pretended not to think about.

Behn never let that bother her. She pointed out, quite correctly, that if her plays had been written by a man they’d have been hailed as racy rather than indecent. Alongside her theatrical work—at least eighteen plays survive—she also wrote poetry, short fiction, and translations, displaying an energy that suggests either boundless enthusiasm or a desperate need to pay the rent (probably both).

Her masterpiece was Oroonoko (1688), a novella about an African prince tricked into slavery and transported to Suriname. It was one of the first works in English to take a hard look at the barbarities of the slave trade, and it managed to be both a gripping story and a moral slap in the face to its readers. It is still read today, which is more than can be said for many of her critics.

First edition cover of Oroonoko

By the time she died in 1689, Behn had not only made a career for herself in a field that barely admitted women, she had also left behind a body of work that nudged English drama and fiction into new territory. For someone who started off as an unpaid spy and a debtor, it wasn’t a bad innings at all.

LITERATURE Aphra Behn had a deep and wide-ranging literary appetite, reading extensively in various genres and languages throughout her life. She was highly knowledgeable about classical works, including those of Ovid and other ancient poets, often referencing these sources in her plays and poetry. Behn translated works from French and Latin and engaged with continental literary trends, which greatly influenced her own writing style and themes

NATURE Her experiences in Surinam clearly influenced her writing, as evidenced in Oroonoko which begins with her account of the colony and its natural environment. Oroonoko features descriptions of the natural world and employs the political idea of the "noble savage" to critique European customs and colonial corruption.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Behn's involvement in London's social and theatrical circles suggests active participation in the cultural life of the period.

SCIENCE AND MATHS Behn translated scientific works from French, demonstrating an engagement with contemporary intellectual and scientific trends.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Behn’s religious outlook was strikingly rational for her time. During her life she was even suspected of atheism, largely because she described death as an “eternal night.” While never openly hostile to religion, she often questioned conventional morality and the limitations placed on women.

Her plays and poems reveal a clear scepticism toward revealed religion, though she blended this with an unapologetic sensuality that was unusual for the period. Despite these challenges to orthodoxy, she was likely raised Catholic and once dedicated part of a play to the devoutly Catholic James II—a reminder of her complex and sometimes contradictory stance.

POLITICS Behn was an unflinching Tory and a devoted Royalist throughout her life. In the late 1670s she even acted as a propagandist for Charles II, her pen serving the Crown as much as the stage. The political storms of the Exclusion Crisis brought her into direct conflict with authority: a prologue and epilogue she wrote landed her in legal trouble, and in 1682 she was arrested for a biting satire against the King’s illegitimate son, the Whig Duke of Monmouth.

Her loyalty to the Stuart line never wavered. She refused Bishop Burnet’s invitation to welcome William III in verse and consistently defended James II, even amid waves of anti-Catholic hysteria. Though likely raised Catholic—she once quipped that she had been “designed for a nun”—her politics were less about doctrine than allegiance to monarchy.

Paradoxically, while a staunch monarchist in public life, Behn’s personal philosophy leaned toward libertarian ideals: she argued that private sexual morality should remain beyond political scrutiny. By the end of her life, however, the fall of the Stuarts marked the defeat of the cause to which she had tied herself so fiercely.

Portrait bof Aphra Behn by Mary Beale

SCANDAL Behn faced numerous scandals throughout her career. She was persistently accused of plagiarism and prostitution due to her professional associations in a male-dominated field. The frank sexual language in her plays was condemned because she was a woman, though similar language was accepted from male dramatists. Critics attacked her with typical slurs: "For punk [prostitute] and poetess agree so pat. You cannot well be this and not be that". She was arrested for seditious writing in 1682. (2)

MILITARY RECORD Behn served as a spy for the English crown during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Her espionage career involved a dangerous mission to Antwerp. She was sent to convince former lovers and contacts to become double agents, though her mission was largely unsuccessful. Her code name was Astrea, a name under which she later published many of her writings

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Her health began to decline around 1685. The exact cause of her death is unknown, but one contemporary account suggested that the medical treatments she was receiving may have exacerbated her condition.

HOMES Like many working professionals of her time, she rented her dwellings in London. The absence of a will or estate suggests she did not own property.

TRAVEL Behn travelled extensively for her era. As a child, she journeyed to Surinam in South America returning approximately 1664. In 1666, she undertook a dangerous spying mission to Antwerp in the Netherlands. These travels clearly influenced her writing, particularly her novel Oroonoko, which drew on her experiences in Surinam.

DEATH Aphra Behn died on April 16, 1689, only a few days after the coronation of William and Mary in Westminster Abbey. The exact location of her death and its cause are unknown.

She was buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey, near the steps to the church. Her black marble gravestone was engraved with the words: "MRS APHRA BEHN DYED APRIL 16 A.D. 1689. Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality". The lines may have been written by Aphra herself or possibly by John Hoyle.

The funeral was modest, in keeping with most burials in that area of the Abbey.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Virginia Woolf immortalised Behn in A Room of One's Own (1929), writing: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds".

Her story has been featured in various academic studies and biographical works.

In 2021, the National Archives created a video about her spying career.