Aphra Behn 1640—1689

Aphra Behn was a major British author from the Restoration era, writing under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. As a leading dramatist, coterie poet, translator and proto-novelist, she contributed many important literary works. She was also one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, breaking cultural barriers, and serving as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Behn is famously remembered in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: “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.”. Although her sensational biography has often overshadowed her literary achievements, much solid bibliographical and critical work has been done since the 1990s to establish her oeuvre and its value. (source: Wikipedia)