Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is historically recognized as the first woman to make a living through writing; her plays, novels, poems and pamphlets have met with fresh notoriety since the 20th Century. Her work was particularly significant to a group of contemporary writers known as The Female Wits, as well as to later feminist writers like Virginia Woolf. Stories of comedy and intrigue, complete with masks, mistaken identities, visual deceptions, and complicated love triangles which reflect Behn's remarkable life experiences: her conservative upbringing, her political support of the Tories, her recruitment as a political spy for Charles II, and later speculation of her bisexuality. Behn once wrote that she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry." This first volume of Behn's collected works includes a Preface, a Memoir and Portraits of Mrs. Behn, her best-known play, "The Rover," "The Dutch Lover," "The Roundheads," and critical and explanatory notes for the reader.
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