Who

Me

I am obviously not a 17th Century playwright, poet or spy and alas not a lesbian icon, but I admire Aphra Behn’s unflinching realism and her ability to make her living in a male world.

Also, we look surprisingly alike.

I am an Englishwoman living in Scotland writing about anything that interests me.  But I don’t write about my employer or my current work.

The opinions here are my own; I revise my opinions when I find out more so I no longer hold some of the opinions expressed here. 

I should also warn you that I got quite sweary in some of the older posts.

Her

Aphra Behn was the first English-woman to make her living by writing. She was a playwright, a novelist and a poet in the difficult, sexy, political world of post-Restoration London.

She was English, but married to a Dutch man who left her a widow at the age of 25 or so.  She spent some time in the Netherlands passing information to the government of Charles II, but she was never paid for her work as a spy and she returned to London.  She did not re-marry, preferring to make her own way in the world. Her writing is sufficiently erotically charged and sexually ambiguous for the Georgian and Victorian critics to declare her immoral and then ignore her. She is better known  and better respected now than at any time since her own.