‘To the Unknown Daphnis’ published: a poem in praise of Thomas Creech’s translation of Lucretius which, in a later printed version, declared her religious scepticism.

Discovered June: Rye-House Plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother James.

1684 Prologue written to Rochester’s Valentinian. First part of Love-Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister published anonymously. Poems upon Several Occasions published: her only single-authored collection of poems, it included her long adaptation from the French, Voyage to the Island of Love.

1685 6 February: Death of Charles II and accession of James II. Failed rebellion of Monmouth, whom many Protestants wished to see as king in place of the Catholic James.

Wrote Pindarick on the Death of Charles II, Poem to Catharine Queen Dowager and A Pindarick on the Happy Coronation of… James II. Anonymously published second part of Love-Letters. Under own name published a poem in praise of Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness; a collection of poems by several hands including her own, called Miscellany, together with a translation of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims entitled Seneca Unmasqued.

Appealed to the United Company treasurer for an advance on her next play.

1686 Play The Luckey Chance performed.

Possibly helped compile the manuscript ‘Astrea’s Book for Songs and Satyrs’, a collection of satires now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; published another French adaptation, La Montre: or the Lover’s Watch.

1687 The pantomimic The Emperor of the Moon performed.

The Luckey Chance published with a rousing address to the reader, defending herself against the charge of bawdiness and declaring herself worthy of fame: ‘All I ask, is the Priviledge for my Masculine Part the Poet in me…’; published her panegyric To the Most Illustrious Prince Christopher Duke of Albemarle, and the third part of Love-Letters, in which she described the downfall of Monmouth in the character of Cesario; published puffs for Sir Francis Fane’s play The Sacrifice and Henry Higden’s translation of Juvenal’s tenth satire. Provided verses for a printing of Aesop’s Fables. References to Behn’s increasing ill health in her work and in satires on her.

1688 Published Lycidus: or the Lover in Fashion (second part of Island of Love), together with a Miscellany of New Poems by Several Hands. Translated two popular books by the French philosopher Fontenelle: A Discovery of New Worlds and The History of Oracles.

In response to Queen Mary’s pregnancy, wrote A Congratulatory Poem… On the Universal Hopes… for a Prince of Wales, followed after the birth by Congratulatory Poem… On the Happy Birth of the Prince of Wales. Published Oroonoko, The Fair Jilt and the translation Agnes de Castro. Poem to Sir Roger L’Estrange reasserted loyalty to James II, as did a criticism of another court poet in her satire To Poet Bavius. Wrote an elegy on the death of the poem Edmund Waller. Published Three Histories: Oroonoko, The Fair Jilt, Agnes de Castro.

1 June: James imprisoned Anglican bishops for refusing to read his declaration of toleration in churches; they saw it as an attack on Protestantism. 10 June: James’s son born.

29 June: trial of bishops began; they were acquitted with much popular jubilation. About this time invitation by several peers to William to invade was drafted.

July–August: William prepared for invasion, while James made political concessions, e.g. announcing intention to call a parliament.

28 September: William told States General of Holland of intended invasion, based on the invitation from James’s subjects who wished to be saved from popery and slavery. Claimed he was invading to secure a free parliament not to dethrone James.

5 November: William landed at Torbay. Many English defected to his army.

9 December: Mary of Modena and the baby left for France.

11 December: James fled from London, was captured, but William gave orders he should be allowed to proceed to France, where he joined the queen and their son.

End December: William was de facto king.

1689 In A Pindaric Poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet she refused an apparent request to praise William of Orange. Published ‘Of Trees’, a long verse translation of part of Abraham Cowley’s Latin poem Six Books of Plants (1668). Greeted new queen Mary with A Congratulatory Poem to Queen Mary, in which she called the deposed James ‘Great Lord, of all my Vows’.

13 February: Parliament offered crown to William and Mary, considering that James had abdicated.

11 April: William and Mary crowned in Westminster Abbey.

16 April: Aphra Behn died; buried in Westminster Abbey.

1689 The Widdow Ranter produced posthumously; published the following year. The History of the Nun and The Lucky Mistake published.

1696 The Younger Brother, Or, The Amorous Jilt performed and published with emendations. Thomas Southerne’s adaptation of Oroonoko published. The Histories and Novels published, including La Montre and the story ‘Love-Letters’.

1698 All the Histories and Novels published, adding more stories: ‘Memoirs of the Court of the King of Bantam’, ‘The Nun or the Perjured Beauty’ and ‘The Adventure of the Black Lady’.

1700 Histories, Novels, and Translations published, adding ‘The Unfortunate Bride or The Blind Lady’, ‘The Dumb Virgin’, ‘The Unfortunate Happy Lady’, ‘The Wandring Beauty’ and ‘The Unhappy Mistake’.

INTRODUCTION

Let me with Sappho and Orinda be

Oh ever sacred nymph, adorned by thee;

And give my verses immortality.1

Aphra Behn addressed these lines to the laurel, giver of fame, shortly before she died in 1689. She had some reason to expect literary ‘immortality’: she was the first recognized professional woman writer in English and she had long been praised as ‘sole Empress of the Land of Wit’, famous for her androgynous perfections, her ‘female sweetness’ and her ‘manly grace’.2 After her death and burial in Westminster Abbey – where the register recorded her nom de plume ‘Astrea’ rather than her supposedly given name ‘Aphra’ – her reputation seemed assured and her praise continued. A ‘young Lady of Quality’ wrote:

Of her own sex, not one is found

Who dares her laurel wear

Withheld by impotence or fear;

With her it withers on the ground.3

Yet history was against Behn. She died when the ideal of nobility, royalty and authenticity about which she had written so fervently were vanishing with the last Stuart king’s flight from his kingdom, and when her principles of frankness in men and women were giving way to a more gendered vision of feminine modesty and masculine condescension. In her life she had been attacked by the satirist Robert Gould as a vile ‘punk and poetess’ and she had often defended herself against charges of conventional bawdiness. But in the centuries that followed she was silenced less by abuse than by a neglect deriving from disgust. The ‘Modest Muse’ came to dominate the female pen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and Behn’s frank, erotic verses were dropped from anthologies of women writers. ‘The Apotheosis of Milton’ in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1738 imagines a fiery-eyed and bare-breasted Aphra who has tried to join the male poets being told that ‘none of her sex has any right to a seat there’.