The Works of Aphra Behn

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Editor: Janet Todd

The Pickering Masters

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 appeared 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.

Contents

Volume 1
Poetry

Volume 2
Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684)

Volume 3
The Fair Jilt and Other Stories, A collection of Behn's short fiction increasingly of interest to scholars for its raising of the issues of gender, race and class.
Stories included in this volume: The Adventure of the Black Lady, Agnes de Castro, The Dumb Virgin, The Fair Jilt, The History of the Nun, Love Letters, The Lucky Mistake, Memoirs of the Court of the King of Bantam, The Nun, Oroonoko, The Unfortunate Bride, The Unfortunate Happy Lady, The Wandering Beauty, and The Unhappy Mistake.

Volume 4
Seneca Unmask'd, A Discovery of New Worlds, The History of Oracles, La Montre, Lycidus

Volume 5
The Plays of Aphra Behn, 1671-7 Aphra Behn's plays are bawdy and propagandist. Populated by rogues, rakes and galavanting women (often parading in men's clothes) they challenge the sexual and political mores of the day. It is therefore remarkable not only that they were written by a woman, but that they were also published and staged in her time.
The Forc'd Marriage (1671); The Amorous Prince (1671); The Dutch Lover (1673); Abdelazer (1677) The Town-Fopp (1677); The Debauchee (1677); The Rover (1677)

Volume 6
The Plays of Aphra Behn (1677-82): Sir Patient Fancy (1678); The Feign'd Curtizans (1979); The Revenge (attrib. 1680); The Second Part of the Rover (1681); The False Count (1682); The Roundheads (1682)

Volume 7
The Plays of Aphra Behn (1682-96): The City-Heiress (1682); The Young King (1683); The Emperor of the Moon (1687); The Luckey Chance (1687); The Widdow Ranter (1690); The Younger Brother (1696)

Reviews

‘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.’
– 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, The Times Literary Supplement

Related titles

• Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights
• The Poems of Aphra Behn: A Selection

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