The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn

Janet Todd has assumed the mantle of the leading authority on Aphra Behn (1660?‐1689), known as the first professional female writer in English. Todd's detailed account of Behn's life and work in the recently published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Matthew and Harrison, 2004) (RR 2005/59) recounts how “she may have acted as a royalist spy or agent” (p. 842), details her career as a playwright, as a poet, and as a prose writer in addition to piecing together the evidence for what seems to have been a fascinating private life. During her own lifetime as an author...