Overview

The first complete edition of the works of Aphra Behn, including several new attributions. Drawing on a mass of new material in private papers and the Public Records Office, Janet Todd has discovered texts which reveal Behn as a far more enigmatic figure than she initially appears to be. The texts are published with extensive notes, textual introductions and variant readings. Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre, a popular poet and author of the influential novel Oroonoko. She was the first woman to earn her living by writing and amid her many travels was sent by Charles II as a spy to Antwerp during the Anglo-Dutch War. Because of the overtly political nature of many of her plays and poems, much of her writing appeared anonymously and in many different versions.

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9781851960187

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Reviews

'Todd's The Works of Aphra Behn presents Behn's fiction with the full apparatus it deserves, hitherto only found in editions of her drama or her most famous novel, Oroonoko. Todd compliments her critical introductions with detailed critical and textual notes, reproductions of original title pages and other relevant contemporary images, and in case of the Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, extensive appendixes containing source material and variants... The available volumes of Todd's edition help define the role of women in issues that currently preoccupy many Romantic scholars... I hope this new, superior edition of Behn's work will stimulate more studies of this type.' - Catherine Decker, The Wordsworth Circle 'The Works of Aphra Behn replaces the Montagu Summer's 1915 edition of her work. Time has brought new material to light, so, as one would expect, Todd's version represents a considerable advance on Summer's, though she acknowledges it is difficult to match the literary and anecdotal knowledge of the Restoration he reveals in his attributions and end-notes. Todd's own work is admirably scholarly ... [her] notes concise and clear... We can look forward to further volumes in the Pickering series, for we need well-edited and clear copies of most of Behn's plays, and much of her fiction.' - Margaret Anne Doody, London Review of Books '... these three volumes [vols 5-7] conclude a labour which has provided modern scholars with a version of Aphra Behn's writings that they can, finally, do business with - a circumstance which would no doubt have gratified and appeased the author's sense of professional duty.' - Ros Ballaster, TLS

'admirably scholarly ... we can look forward to further volumes in the Pickering series, for we need well-edited and clear copies of most of Behn's plays, and much of her fiction.' London Review of Books '... these three volumes [vols 5-7] conclude a labour which has provided modern scholars with a version of Aphra Behn's writings that they can, finally, do business with - a circumstance which would no doubt have gratified and appeased the author's sense of professional duty.' Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Editor Janet Todd is at the University of East Anglia

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