Overview

Playwright, poet, spy, a scarlet woman condemned for loose morals . . . meet Aphra Behn, history's most fascinating female In 1682, a young woman in the throes of a passionate affair flees her parents' home in Surrey to seek a new life in London. A scandal in its own right, but this is no ordinary young woman- Lady Henrietta Berkeley is the daughter of one of England's most powerful men, and her lover is her own sister's husband... Inspired by this scandal, Aphra Behn would go on to write Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, arguably the first novel in English literature. An immediate bestseller, it propelled Behn out of poverty and disgrace, yet she remains an enigma, the facts about her life continually disputed. In The Scandal of the Century, Lisa Hilton interweaves the story of these two rebellious and ruthless women. Against the backdrop of seventeenth-century England, with its strict traditional conventions of love, duty and identity, she shows just how far these women would go to break free.

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9781405953337

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Reviews

'A landmark book, a sweeping, scintillatingly original, exciting and game changing exploration of writer, spy, power player, lover Aphra Behn. Thrilling, scholarly, powerfully researched, this is Aphra as she’s never been seen before. She bursts from the page, and Lisa Hilton brings to complex, unforgettable, vibrant life this fascinating woman and her unstable, dangerous times that have so much in common with ours' * Kate Williams, historian and author of Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots *

Author Information

Lisa Hilton is a best-selling author, historian, presenter and historical consultant. Taking inspiration from the lives of women who shaped the world, she has written six historical biographies including Athenais- The Real Queen of France (shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Prize) and the critically-acclaimed Elizabeth, Renaissance Prince. She has presented numerous historical series, including 'Charles I- Downfall' (BBC4, 2019) and 'Charles I- Killing a King' (BBC4, 2020). Lisa grew up in the north of England and read English at New College, Oxford, after which she studied History of Art in Florence and Paris. Since then, Lisa has lived in New York, Paris, Milan and London.

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