Aphra Behn: A Secret Life

by Janet Todd

The life, work and history of Aphra Behn: seventeenth ­century dramatist, poet, novelist, political propagandist, bisexual writer, and spy.

Praise for the first hardback edition:

“Fascinating scholarship. Todd conveys Behn's vivacious character and the mores of the time.” —the New York Times

“Ground-breaking—it reads quickly and lightly. Even Todd’s throwaway lines are steeped in learning and observation.” —Ruth Perry, MIT, Women’s Review of Books

“A major biography; of interest to everyone who cares about women as writers.” —Times Higher Education Supplement

“Fascinating, a page-turner and a delight, an astonishingly thorough book.” —Emma Donoghue

“All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn. . . . For it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” —Virginia Woolf

Aphra Behn, a spy in the Netherlands and the Americas, was the first professional woman writer. The most prolific dramatist of her age, innovative novelist, translator, lyrical and erotic poet, she expresses a frank sexuality addressing impotence, orgasm and bisexuality, whilst serving as political propagandist for the monarch.

This revised biography of the extraordinary, ground-breaking writer, who is emblematic of the Restoration period, a time of masks and self-fashioning, is set in conflict-ridden England, Europe, and in the mismanaged slave colonies, following the Puritan republic in 1660.

Janet Todd, novelist and internationally renowned scholar, was President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and a Professor at Rutgers, NJ. An expert on women’s writing and feminism, she has published on many writers, including Jane Austen, the Shelley Circle, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Aphra Behn.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, British Literature, 17th Century, Womens

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Janet Todd (Jan) is a novelist, biographer, literary critic and internationally renowned scholar, known for her work on
women’s writing and feminism. Her most recent books include
the novel: Don't You Know There's A War On?;
edition and essay: Jane Austen’s Sanditon;
memoir: Radiation Diaries: Cancer, Memory
and Fragments of a Life in Words;
biography: Aphra Behn: A Secret Life;
the novel: A Man of Genius 2016.
Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: An Illustrated Novel, forthcoming 2021

A co-founder of the journal Women’s Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors,including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters, Mary (Shelley) and Fanny (Death And The Maidens) , and the Irish-Republican sympathiser, traveller and medical student, Lady Mount Cashell (Daughters of Ireland).

Born in Wales, Janet Todd grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at schools and universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College,
Rutgers, Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of
Newnham College.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

I mean, the problem with writing about someone who's left quite so many questions behind is that a search for 'may' or 'probably' or 'perhaps' would crash the ereader.

Which is not the author's fault. Behn is not pinnable-down. But there is a bit of a tendency to say "She may have..." and then narrate in detail much as if she definitely did, which when you're literally hypothesising spy trips to France is a bit much.

It's excellent on the febrile, sordid atmosphere of Restoration London's intelligentsia and very good on the politics (if you want a deep dive), and Behn comes across as strongly as can be expected given we don['t even know what her real name was.

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 17th century dramatist, Aphra Behn, is a notoriously tricky subject for biographers to tackle. For such a gregarious and ostensibly dissolute figure, facts about her are rudimentary and her background is almost impenetrable - but that hasn't stopped the British scholar Janet Todd from achieving a phenomenal feat with her freshly revised life history of the dynamic playwright.

Behn is celebrated for being one of the first English women to earn a living from her pen. She courageously shattered many cultural conventions of her day, while in some ways remaining in step with her times. She was a major influence on female writers for years to come, but her prosopography is murky, which to some extent was intentional on her part.

“Aphra Behn is not so much a woman to be unmasked as an unending combination of masks and intrigue, and her work delivers different images and sometimes contradictory views.” – Janet Todd

Believed to have been born around 1640, Aphra Behn rose from obscurity to work as a secret agent in Antwerp for the newly returned English King. She lived through a time of immense political upheaval, when the decadent Charles II and his court returned from exile, ushering in a new era both in fashion and the arts.

Todd's research into the period is breathtaking, and the limited knowledge we possess about Behn is used to create a stout and thoroughly detailed biography, which reveals much about the people with whom she associated and the places she frequented in Restoration London. Inevitably, there is much speculation over the man she married, her intimate friendships and bisexuality – though, there is a wealth of information pertaining to her plays and poetry – however, this volume is as close as we are likely to get to the woman behind the mask.

A gripping portrait of an enigmatic character.

[Sherwood Smith]

Reread; some good surmises about Behn, given that there is about a half page of real facts known about her.

Todd is upfront about the risks of winnowing out real life details from plays and fiction (I wish more biographers were that cognizant) and given that, she presents a thoughtful case.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behn is a complicated subject for biography as the sources are limited, sometimes covert, and Behn herself lived her life through a series of masques: Royalist spy, playwright, libertine. A woman with limited education without Latin, and without the benefits of either family or money, she made her own way in Restoration London.

Todd had done a masterful job of mining the sources that we have and has been rummaging around the archives to offer the fullest portrait to date of Behn as both woman and writer. Attentive to her various liaisons, and studiously refusing to romanticize her femininity, this embraces the complexities of Behn: while refusing to be confined to a conventional female role, she believed in hereditary monarchy, the divine right of kings, and had little time for ideas of democracy or a parliamentary constitution.

Todd inevitably draws on Behn's writings but not in any simple linear fashion. Instead she draws out Behn's concerns with sexual and gender politics, and the way she uses humour and satire to articulate her agenda without compromising her essential need to entertain not least because, unlike Rochester, for example, she had neither money nor social status outside of her profession as author.

So a complicated woman - and a scholarly biography which does her justice.

[Jessica Bronder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aphra Behn is the first woman to make her living as a writer of plays during the Restoration period. But the knowledge of her is very limited because over her years she had many versions of herself that she told from her parents, her name, and such. Janet Todd has done a great job of filling in the possibilities of Aphra’s life from what is known. But with intense review of her work, Janet Todd has done a great job of putting together a story about Aphra.

Aphra was many things over her years and a study in complete opposites seemed to be the main thing. She wrote plays, translated books, was a spy, loved both men and women, and although she was famous she also wanted her privacy. But the thing I liked the best about her was that she didn’t knuckle down to the critics and the men that expected her to write a specific way just because she was a woman.

Janet Todd does break down Alpha’s plays but I’m sorry to admit that I don’t mind reading things but when you start analyzing them like a high school English class my mind shuts off. I did think this was a well written story of Aphra Behn and it introduced me to an author that I had never heard of before.

I received The Secret Life of Aphra Behn from the publisher for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

[Cheyanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aphra Behn is thought to be the first English woman to make her living as a professional writer, primarily writing for the theatre. Little is known about her life apart from her career, but paradoxically the most interesting parts of this book were the passages in which the author speculates about the missing chapters of Aphra's story. Janet Todd is so well versed in the Restoration period, which was such a colorful era, that the descriptions of Aphra Behn's society are highly entertaining whether the details of her life are correct or not. The detailed analyses of Behn's plays, novels and poems were slow going for me however. Even the greatest plays are pretty dull in synopsis and Behn was writing commercial entertainments, not timeless works of art. So if you are not a literary scholar, do as I did, skim the literary analysis and focus on the intriguing glimpses of the playwright and her set.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been born and lived through the English Civil War, Aphra Behn is a woman that history and modern feminist have forgotten. She grew up to be a spy (not a very good one), a playwright, political propagandist, commentator on colonialism and race, and finally, simply regarded as a ‘smutty writer.’ She is considered the first woman to earn a living as a writer and the short story Oroonoko is considered her most infamous work.

Quite a woman and commentator to the political and religious pieties taking place in 17th century English Empire.

[Doria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography of the incomparable Aphra Behn, playwright-poet-novelist of the Restoration period of English history. Engagingly and wittily written, carefully researched, with plenty of quotations from original sources, the author has done a marvelous job of painting a picture of a woman writer whose life was led in a tantalizing mixture of bravura performances and stealthy obscurity.

I highly recommend reading Behn's works side by side with this biography, since, in addition to shedding light on Aphra's life and upon the tumultuous political times in which she lived, the book also provides probing and useful analyses of many of her works, including a broad sampling of not only her better-known plays and prose works, but also her court poetry, scurrilous rhymes, erotic poems, and epilogues to the works of her colleagues. Mrs. Behn was industrious and prolific, and Janet Todd gamely keeps pace with her fascinating subject. A great read!

[Lexxi Kitty]

I received this book through Netgalley/Bloomsbury Reader for an honest review

NOT A REVIEW (yet)

This book is a biography. The subject is Aphra Behn. Behn was a spy, novelist, playwright, poet, and one of the first women to earn a living through their pen (the author of this book says 'first' ("Behn is hailed as the first thoroughly professional woman writer"), Wikipedia says 'one of the first'). She lived from roughly ~1640 to 1689 and her main reputation, literary reputation, occurred during the 'Restoration period'. As seems to happen with words used to pinpoint certain periods in English history, the term 'restoration period' is elastic - some use it for the short period of time when the monarchy was restored and a few years afterwards when the new political system settled down (1660-?), others use it to cover that period, the entirety of the reign of King Charles II (1660-1685), King James II (1685-1688), and all the way up to and ending with the new dynasty (the accession of George I in 1714). Since Behn died in 1689, the exact end date of the period doesn't really matter.

So - Behn lived through that period of time when King Charles I was executed (she was 9 at the time, give or take a few years since her exact date of birth is not known), through the time Cromwell was the Lord Protector, and died some time during the Restoration period.

The author of the biography puts the time period thusly:

Aphra Behn's age was the Restoration, that vibrant, violent and shoddy period which began with the arrival in Kent of King Charles II in 1660 and ended with the flight of his brother,
James II, in 1688.

Beyond being one of the first women (or the first) to earn her living through writing, Behn also worked and lived during a period of time when morality was in flux. There was the Puritan period; the free ranging restoration period, then, after she died, two centuries of - basically - repression. The way she wrote, the subject matters, the crude graphic nature, the erotic poetry, the bisexual works - some of which shock people even today (so says the author of the biography).

It should be noted, and the author does note this - regardless of how 'modern', or 'not modern' some of her views appear - Behn is "a woman very much not of our time."

Also of importance to note - Behn lived during a period of time when people had to hide who they are, be secretive, wear masks - it was a time of conflict, a time of people killing others; a time when kings were beheaded. So people routinely reinvented themselves, and hid themselves. Therefore it is difficult to truly know anyone during this period of time - then and now in our era looking back.

With her craft and experimental echniques, her exciting female perspective on everything from politics to domesticity and sex, I thought her on a level with Jane Austen in literary importance. I still do.

[V.T. Davy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly and entertaining. Todd makes much of very little concrete evidence. Behn was necessarily and habitually a secret woman and so little is really known about her. Even the one portrait that survives of her, may not actually be her. Todd extrapolates, from the fragments of letters available and Behn’s own works, Behn’s character and views. Much of the book explains the political and social history (in some depth) of Behn’s age sets her and her plays in context. It is a good way of demonstrating just how groundbreaking Behn was as a writer. It was the fashion to take old plays and give them a new twist – it would be considered plagarism now. Then, Behn was doing what everyone was doing except with innovations in the representation of female characters and witty political satire. Inspiring.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

La vita di questa scrittrice inglese, Aphra Behn, vissuta tra il 1640 e il 1689, poetessa, autrice di teatro e di romanzi, si legge proprio come un romanzo. Una donna che fu anche una instancabile viaggiatrice, oltre che una spia. In effetti, quest'ultima fu l'attività che, insieme alla scrittura, le diede un vero sostentamento per vivere. E' passata alla storia come la donna che, prima al mondo, si guadagnò da vivere scrivendo.

Leggendo la sua biografia mi ha fatto venire in mente quella di un'altra donna. Questa, oltre che scrittrice, fu anche femminista e rivoluzionaria, sempre inglese. Ha un posto importante nella storia della letteratura. Mia moglie scrisse su di lei la sua tesi a conclusione degli studi universitari.
Il suo nome è Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin. In un post su questo blog, la definii una iena col reggiseno. Il confronto con Aphra Behn mi pare sostenibile, pur con la distanza di un secolo.

Oltre che viaggiatrice, scrittrice, poetessa ed avventuriera, Aphra fu anche una spia nella sua pur breve esistenza. Virginia Woolf, altra famosa scrittrice inglese, non si lasciò sfuggire l'occasione di occuparsene scrivendo che "tuttte le donne dovrebbero portare fiori sulla tomba di Aphra in quanto fu lei ad insegnare alle donne a dire e a scrivere quello che pensano con la loro mente, ma anche a quello che fanno col loro corpo".

Un secolo prima della "iena" Mary, Aphra Behn, oltre che scrivere di poesia lirica, si occupò anche di temi in prosa e in versi erotici. Con tutta la possibile e franca sessualità indirizzata all'impotenza maschile, esaltando l'orgasmo femminile, ed anche le indeterminatezze che la stessa sessualità può comportare.

Siamo in piena Restaurazione inglese, è bene ricordarlo. Nesssun'altra donna avrebbe goduto per secoli di una libertà di questo tipo. Nel tempo da lei vissuto, si guadagnò la fama di un certo tipo di moderna poetessa "punk". In vita, i suoi contemporanei non la riconobbero come tale, una "teppista", ma soltanto come una poetessa.

Oltre ai suoi successi teatrali e narrativi, Aphra Behn fu una spia reale in Olanda e forse anche in America del Sud. Fu una propagandista alla corte di Carlo II e di suo fratello molto poco popolare Giacomo II. Venne coinvolta nei tanti conflitti tra l'Inghilterra e il Continente anche in connessione con il traffico degli schiavi nelle Americhe.

Mise su carta le sue molte straordinarie avventure ed esperienze quasi sempre in forma anonima, mescolando nella sua scrittura segreti, luci e oscurità, realtà e fantasie, in una maniera tale che chi legge non sa fare distinzioni. Sappiamo molte cose certe sul suo conto per quanto riguarda la carriera di scrittrice. Ben poco della sua vita reale. Il tempo della Restaurazione in cui visse conferma questa impressione.

La sua tecnica narrativa è tipicamente femminile nella percezione della realtà specialmente se la si vede in relazione con il rapporto con l'altro sesso. La sua scrittura è piena di esperimenti narrativi non solo in prosa ma anche in poesia. Dimostra di essere in grado di affrontare argomenti tanto diversi e contrastanti, come quelli che coinvolgono sgualdrine e libertini, quanto legati alla nobiltà ed alla politica.

Una mistura ed una mescolanza di trame a soggetto come è il caso del romanzo breve Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave che divenne tanto popolare da diventare anche una opera teatrale di grande successo. Un "cocktail" di interessi in cui il sesso sembra avere una parte importante sempre visto nell'eterno conflitto tra mente e corpo.

Quest'ultimo sembra avere spesso la meglio sulla prima, in un'atmosfera culturale in cui la scrittrice sembra come divertirsi a dimostrare quanto sia possibile sovvertire le idee di nobiltà, rango sociale e onore. Difficile addentrarsi nelle sue idee riguardanti la schiavitù, il gender, l'aristocrazia, la politica, le diversità linguistiche e culturali.

Temi ancora oggi molto moderni che trovarono facile interesse in una donna che senza dubbio sapeva "leggere" il suo tempo e taccontarlo a chi voleva conoscerlo, facendoci anche un profitto oltre che una ragione per scriverne. Molti studiosi hanno affermato che i suoi scritti contengono numerose contraddizioni sia politiche che morali e sociali.

Una vita certamente ai limiti, in un tempo quando le donne non avevano diritti. "Diritti" sui quali avrebbe scritto un secolo dopo la "iena in reggiseno" e sui quali, oggi, nessuna donna o uomo discute. Con o senza reggiseno ...

[Lauralee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aphra Behn was an English playwright, novelist, and poet. She is known in history as the first woman to ever make her living as a professional writer. However, we know very little of the woman who shocked all of England with her scandalous plays. Mrs. Todd attempts to create a portrait of this controversial woman by showing her as a spy and a feminist. She proves that Aphra Behn is a woman worth remembering.

Before I read this revised biography of Aphra Behn, I did not know much about her. The only thing I knew of her was that she wrote Oroonoko. Therefore, I was intrigued to read more about this little known figure. Because there are very few known facts about Aphra Behn’s life, there is much speculation about Aphra in A Secret Life. Mrs.Todd puts together the pieces of her cryptic life. Aphra Behn is shown to be the daughter of a barber. Her mother is the nanny for a noble family. Aphra grew up alongside the children of nobles and was given an education. Her connection to nobility allowed her to become an English spy in Surinam and Holland. Mrs. Todd relies on Aphra Behn’s own writings to prove her evidence as a spy.

Mrs. Todd also uses Aphra Behn’s writings to delve deep into Aphra’s personal life and beliefs. She tackles the subject on the many loves in Aphra’s life and whether she was married. Her life as a widow was what turned her to writing. Mrs. Todd also believed that Jack Hoyle was Aphra’s greatest love and muse. Mrs. Todd also portrays her as a champion for women’s rights. She believed that women should recieve an education. She was also an abolitionist. Thus, Mrs. Todd shows Aphra to be a woman ahead of her time.

Overall, this biography is the closest we can ever come to knowing Aphra Behn. Her life was often in the shadows, and Mrs. Todd attempts to bring her out of the shadows. While there is little evidence to her speculations, Mrs. Todd does make a strong case. While we may never know who she truly was, it is clear that Aphra was a fascinating woman. Aphra deserves to be remembered for her accomplishments, and Mrs. Todd’s biography proves why Aphra continues to be studied in colleges.
(Note: I read an ARC copy of this book in courtesy of Netgalley.)

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aphra Behn, born around the year 1640, and probably, according to Todd’s research, somewhere between 1637 and 1643, was a woman of ‘firsts’, surprises, and renown. She was the first woman to earn not just pin-money, but her living by writing, and she wrote – and was upbraided for doing so – ‘frank, erotic verses’. As well as being a professional writer, she worked for a time as a spy for Charles II in Antwerp and also, possibly, in Surinam. She was a playwright in the uncertain world of 17th Century theatre, when conventions were changing and women were allowed to act on stage, and theatres were closing and reopening according to the whims of Cromwell, who closed the theatres, and Charles II, who reopened them but introduced the ‘Patent Theatres’ that licenced only two companies to produce theatre in London.

She was as fascinating a woman of the Restoration period as anyone could hope to find. She was a confident and highly intelligent woman at a time when such qualities were considered unseemly and unwomanly, and she was unbowed by any expectations regarding her status and the suitable behaviour of women. Her life was colourful and vivid; she lived to the full, and took little notice of convention and societal mores, at least where that convention was concerned with her place as a woman, though in other areas, Behn was conservative, a Royalist who believed, for example, in the divine right of kings. Famously, Virginia Woolf said of her that ‘All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.’

So it is somewhat frustrating that of such an important figure in both literary and feminist history, little evidence of her life, beyond her writing itself, survives – if it, indeed, ever existed at all – that would provide us with a full picture of Behn. What we have are scraps and mentions. Todd writes that Robert Gould wrote – derogatively – that she was a ‘Punk & Poetess’, and others – mostly male, as women did not often have a public voice – derided her for her openly sexual poetry. The upshot of this was that she was not taken as seriously as her male contemporaries, and Behn’s work suffered, languishing largely forgotten or ignored, for many years, until a resurgence of interest swelled in the twentieth century.

Todd is one of the foremost – and likely the foremost Behn scholar, and this edition is an updated version of her book that was published originally in 1996. In the intervening twenty years, Todd has been engaged in research, but more than this, a creative shift has occurred in the field of academia in general, which has given Todd scope to present the work not simply as the known and concrete facts of Behn’s life and work, but to also present the much more exciting and dark side of history – that of guesswork, speculation, and leaps of faith.

Readers who are more inclined to strictly academic works need not blanche at this – Todd herself is, of course, a leading academic, and she has tempered her freedom of expression and creativity – but what it has enabled her to write is a presentation of a rounded and complete picture of Behn’s life, and one that has great and wide potential appeal, which may, if the wind is just right, blow the playwright into a more popular, widespread, and deserving appreciation of her works.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

[Elaine Aldred · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aphra Behn was a spy, novelist, playwright and poet who lived in Restoration times. Her work, like her life, was packed with intrigue, very risqué and often fraught with coming up against the law and the establishment. Always short of money, yet she moved within the circles of nobility and some of the foremost literary figures of her day. Even by today’s standards, Aphra Behn would have been seen as remarkable, but given she was a woman living in the time of the Restoration then she could only be described as extraoridinary.

This book took a while to finish, not because it was too dry and academic (it was in fact a smooth read and highly engaging), but more because biographer Janet Todd has packed in as much into the book as Aphra Behn did into her life and I didn’t want to miss a thing.

There is no doubt this is a scholarly book by someone with an in-depth knowledge of Behn’s work and an appreciation of the way in which she manoeuvred her way up from her humble beginnings through to the highest levels of Restoration society.

The Secret Life of Aphra Behn constantly intrigues and entertains, not only because of the fascinating story of this woman, but also because of her biographer’s attention to detail and the insights into how to piece together the life of someone who might at times have slipped under the radar of historical documentation. This is particularly true of Behn’s early life. The way in which Todd assembles Behn’s developing career makes for a fascinating account of how to undertake historical research by considering the individual’s life in a historical and social context.

This makes this book not only a valuable resource for writers wanting inspiration of a lively and unusual character for any genre, but also a dissertation in how to do historical research through an indirect approach, picking up clues from the subject of the biography through their professional output (in Behn’s case, plays, novels and poetry) and social knowledge of that historical period, linked to relevant documentation. In this way Todd crafts a riveting tale of a rambunctious opportunist as well as a scholarly biography.

Highlights are an account of Behn’s spying activities and how she managed to maintain a toehold within the world of playwriting. Spying then it seemed was a very precarious affair, not only because of getting caught, but also because, despite working for the government, they might not be inclined to support your endeavours when you got out there. This often resulted in the spy running out of money due to lack of funding. Maintaining your position as a profitable playwright was equally as precarious, requiring a full understanding of the politics of the times. Someone you courted as a patron might be out of favour a few months later or worse, the play you wrote might touch the wrong political nerve in the eyes of your sponsors and public. The expression “I’ll make sure you’ll never work here again” was all too common in the arena of Restoration arts.

Behn certainly lived life to the full and very much on the edge, at a time where women had few rights. As her biographer, Todd, has managed to draw out fascinating insights of a larger than life character and place her work within the context of the contribution it made to those who came after her.

The Secret Life of Aphra Behn was courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley.

[Michael Bully · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just about five stars. The problem is that so much of biographical details of Aphra Behn’s are disputed, such as her date of birth ,family background, how little is known about her husband as in Mr. Behn , whether she really sailed to the English colony of Suriname ( the setting for her novel ‘Oroonoko or the Royal Slave’ . As a one time spy and an author, she may have embellished key details of her life in any case. And her spying career seems to have been a bit of a disaster.

The book’s greatest strength lies in being a thorough survey of Aphra Behn’s work. How Aphra Behn was a dramatist, poet, novelists linguist .also the seemingly paradoxical s position of being both socially conservative and ground breaking in her subversion of gender roles, her anti-religious views. Certainly highlights how Restoration drama and literature highlighted women’s sexual desire in a relatively explicit way. The author seems to have such a wide ranging knowledge of Restoration theatre , literature and politics. And most importantly, seems to have familiarised herself with the great extent of Aphra Behn’s work.The writer also attempts to establish what parts of Aphra Behn's work really represent her views, and which works were written out of economic or political necessity.

Masses of footnotes for those who want to up the source material. I would liked to have learned more about Aphra Behn’s fall from popularity and how she has been viewed in subsequent generations. The writer doesn’t really delve into the fact that arch traditionalist Reverend Montague Summers edited a six volume set of her work that appeared in 1915.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aphra Behn: A Secret Life is a detailed biography of the Restoration writer known for being a woman in a boys’ club, earning a living from her writing at a time when it was very uncommon for a woman to do so. Behn is one of those literary figures who doesn’t have a huge amount of written documentation about their life, so it is their primary texts that often have to provide clues or suggestions that a biographer can take up. Todd does this to paint a narrative about Aphra Behn rather than giving disjointed facts, using period detail, facts about others, and guesswork to fill in the large number of gaps.

Due to the varied life and times of Aphra Behn, the book covers a lot of different material, from Restoration politics to espionage by way of sex, theatre, and religion. This is a big biography bursting with detail that gives plenty of information about who everyone is, but still feels aimed at both people with specific academic interests and those wanting to read more about Behn not in a research capacity. It can be a little dry, but Todd doesn’t shy away from Restoration scandal and sex when it comes up. In style and content, it reads much like other literary biographies where the subject doesn’t have a huge amount of primary information about them, using their own works alongside snippets of records, historical background, and inspiration from others’ lives in the period.

This is a comprehensive biography that can to appeal to those who want to know more about Behn than a vague awareness of her life and works, or used as a reference for those reading her more closely.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read a book that so thoroughly and openly blurs the line between historical fiction and biography, but she makes it work. Behn is a mysterious figure and liked it that way, but Todd manages to narrow down to the most likely possibilities, explaining and offering alternatives as she goes, without losing the momentum and interest of her story. This book is also a great portrait of the grimy, unpredictable and decadent world of 17th century Restoration England's artists, colonialists, politicians and aristocrats.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of surmise here--no choice really, there are not a lot of great primary sources for Behn's life--but Todd is upfront about it and seems to make reasonable guesses about some of the questions around Behn.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific biography of the first woman writer to earn a living by her pen.

[Alex Sarll]

A deservedly hefty literary biography of English's first female professional writer*, who got things off to a good start by also being a bisexual libertine and spy (given which, is it any wonder that I find the anointing of Jane Austen as The Canonical Female Writer rather anodyne in comparison?). Although one of the disappointments here is that on the whole Behn doesn't seem to have been a very good spy, which is a shame, because I was rather fond of the more accomplished fictional version in Daniel O'Mahony's underappreciated Newtons Sleep. Still, one can cling to the get-out that in the early years, much of the life is necessarily surmise - though unlike some biographers, Todd is always careful to admit as much. And even if the version of Behn she pieces together is sometimes unprovable, at the very least it sheds fascinating light on her world. At times it feels almost like a Squire Haggard pastiche of history: livestock had to be imported to Surinam because bats would eat their udders; important documents have been consumed by rats; there's a very Big Lebowski passage where the author is going through a colony's records looking for Johnsons. Things settle down slightly once Behn is back in London, and the historical detective work is more a case of reading the various sources, lampoons and counterblasts which together record the fascinating/incestuous literary scene of the Restoration capital, in which Behn settles down to the writing that would make her name - as against her letters from the Low Countries during the spying phase, which more recall Monty Python's great Scottish poet, or Peter Ackroyd's life of Poe.

And at her best, what a writer she was! Like her contemporary and chum Rochester, she was Cavalier in the best possible sense (whereas the previous generation of Cavalier poets, the peers of Charles I rather than II, tend on the page to be a little bit limp, a tad Fotherington-Thomas). One of my favourite lines in the book: "Behn did not equate intelligence with this introspection, as later ages would do; she considered that a resolute triviality was as intellectually reasonable a response to an analysis of the human predicament as concentrating on the 'depths' of something presumed to be the 'self'." Which is slightly harsh on later ages - what of Wilde, Coward, Cabell? The resolutely and defiantly flippant intellect was not, thank heavens, unique to Behn's moment. But by heavens they did it with aplomb. Obviously, even at the time that didn't go down well with everyone - Todd is interesting in tracing the tides in the degree to which, at any given point, Behn is being attacked for her gender, her lewdness, her plagiarisms, or simply for being a jobbing writer rather than a leisured amateur. Apart from anything else, the old argument about rules in drama was having one of its flare-ups. The faction with a hard-on for Aristotle's unities was on this occasion exemplified by the tedious Shadwell, declaiming at anyone fool enough to listen that a 'proper' play should take a year to write, which was hardly viable if you had bills to pay. This passage had already made me think of Keats' knife-beautiful line about a later swarm of the same dull breed, who played upon a rocking horse and thought it Pegasus - so it came as no surprise when Todd added that a subsequent and more notorious exponent of this tediously constrained school of writing, the odious Pope, had also set himself against Behn. Though, typically of that mendacious little worm, he needed to misquote her to make the charges stick. And still fails, just like always. But, for all that giving that prick a kicking is always fun (he would surely be the first card in any deck of Great Incels In History), I digress. The point being, Behn was important not only in taking on the prigs, but in how she took them on. Rather than insisting that no, drama was moral, she had the wit to shift the goalposts and assert, quite correctly, that morality was not its purpose nor its metric. It was fun, and that was enough.

Still, Todd is careful to remind us that, while Behn was ahead of her time in many respects, that certainly doesn't make her a modern in petticoats. Oronooko may be Behn's most famous work, with a noble black hero and a villainous slaver, but in principle Behn was fine with slavery so long as only the baser sort were enslaved. Which was not necessarily a racial thing - in these early days of empire, indentured white servants in Surinam faced treatment roughly as appalling as black slaves, and while there could obviously be a racial angle to proceedings, the spurious intellectual architecture of later imperial racism had not yet been erected. Similarly, she was a Tory in the oldest sense, being firmly Jacobite and writing several works intended to undermine Monmouth and his faction, or shore up James II against the threat of William. Which makes a degree of sense given when she lived - her scepticism of the bourgeois mob, her belief that democratic rhetoric was only ever a fig-leaf for would-be tyrants, made ample sense given she lived through the grim, hypocritical, authoritarian years of Puritan rule. The notion that she'd been lucky in her monarch, that they might not all be as liberal as Charles II, seems simply not to have occurred to her - a legitimate monarch was simply safer than the alternative, even if that meant hewing to James II, who generally comes across as one of our least likable sovereigns, but by whom Behn seems to have been genuinely enthused. Still, I suppose he did like the theatre...and you can understand why she was unimpressed by the the ludicrous paranoia around the supposed Popish Plot, which more than slightly recalls Paul Dacre's Mail in its attempts to uncover a purported enemy within, plotting to drag Britain back under Continental dominion. And indeed, the way in which Charles was fought over as symbol, despite his own actions not always helping the narrative, is not dissimilar to the way Parliamentary sovereignty is now exactly the thing for which the Heil et al fight, unless and until it does something they don't like when...look! Over there! An enemy of the people!

As you might infer from the subtitle, teasing out the unresolved contradictions in Behn feels like the part of this project which Todd most enjoyed. Behn was a firm believer in absolute monarchy - while never accepting what was usually its corollary, the domestic power of men over women. Hell, she was ambivalent even about the effect of Stuart reforms on the squirearchy - which was at once a local replica and image of the monarchy to the nation, yet a brake and barrier to the very power it figured. And as for the importance of organised religion, again normally co-morbid with Tory sentiments...well, she was far too much the freethinker and libertine for that, even if she was sometimes given to dissembling on the point. Similarly, given the age and the milieu in which she lived, Behn's attitude to sex and gender is a most fascinating mess. Particularly in some of the earlier plays, Todd finds the most compelling female characters tend to be animated by a shared sense of gender as a game and sex a pleasure - but this vision seems very much to darken as Behn ages, and be overtaken by an awareness of the double standard by which women are judged, and the knowledge that men may rage or bluster, but women must plan and choose their steps carefully. Part of this seems tied to a sense that Behn felt like 'one of the boys', hanging out with rakes and wits whose verse and manner might be misogynous, but not towards her. Which in turn might inform the way that, in the plays, it's only the bashful and conventional female characters at risk of male sexual violence, never the lively and witty ones (and as if any reminder were needed of how wrong that assessment is, it was right after reading that section that I saw last week's dreadful news of an Australian stand-up raped and murdered on her way back from a gig). And then as Behn grew older, and the friends died or fell out, to be replaced by a new generation of literary men...well, the jibes grew nastier. And so there comes a more pointed sense of how fucked up the relations between the sexes were, where men can be put off by willingness in women, but so too women by an excess of biddability in men. Todd suggests that it was incresingly brought home to Behn that the male rake remains part of society in a way the female rake cannot, and by the later plays it seems as if the relationship of pimp and punk - think Brecht and Weill's 'Tango Ballad', a quarter-millennium early - is about as good as it gets.

And yet, set against what might seem a gender essentialism there, always a certain queerness. Behn's probable longest-term lover, Hoyle, was bi, and whether because of his orientation, some ailment, the contraceptive limitations of the day, or simple personal preference, Todd suspects that the relationship may never have been conventionally consummated. Here, because even a writer considered bawdy in the 17th century doesn't go into the sort of detail one expects from a modern sex blogger, we return again to realms of surmise - but Todd makes a fairly convincing case. Particularly when she also draws in the symbolism and language of Behn's pastoral writing to suggest an identification of the mythical Golden Age with a gentler, non-penetrative sexuality. Against which, a keen awareness of the less gentle forms polymorphous perversity can take. The most bleakly amusing, for me, being the observation of how that Renaissance stage mainstay, cross-dressing disguise, tends to work in Behn plays: young women can dress as men, sure, but since they will only ever convince as young men, it often doesn't profit them much. They're still lust objects for older men, after all, on top of which they can now legitimately be attacked in bouts of non-sexual violence.

Like most biographies, it gets more depressing as it goes along; friends die, health fails, opinions harden. The Jacobite sympathies, never easy to like, extend as far as defending the bloodthirsty Judge Jeffreys, and ever more tawdry hymns of praise to James II and his intimates - to which were often appended not-so-subtle hints that the best way for them to show what magnificent and rightful rulers they were would be to spend a little more in support of the arts [nudges, winks, extends hand]. You might expect a little light from the fact that Oronooko, for which Behn is best known nowadays, was a late work. But it's slightly eclipsed in the chapters addressing the period of its composition, much of its matter having already been dealt with in the earlier chapters discussing the overseas adventures which inspired it. And so, less than a week after the Glorious Revolution is sealed with coronation, Behn dies - as Todd notes, a rare case of a historical personage obligingly fitting into the era with which they're associated. And one is left with a nagging sense that it should have been a happier life, and a more productive one - but then, isn't that so often the way? And like Stoppard's vision of Wilde in The Invention of Love, Behn accomplished so much more by living when she did, at once ahead of her time and a perfect expression of it.

*In traditionally 'literary' forms, at any rate. Which Todd addresses in an early footnote, so I shall do likewise.

(Netgalley ARC. Over which I took far too long. Sorry, publisher. Sublisher)

[misha]

IN DEFENSE OF JOHN WILMOT EARL OF ROCHESTER
The book is very empathic towards aphra but is extremely negatively biased against the earl of Rochester , consistently calling him a misogynist , treating him as a piece of shit because of his money and status so his life must be great and he should be shamed for struggling and poor people like aphra should be inspiring

1- Why people treat money ,status and gender as the 3 main pillars of success ?
what about his awful profoundly repressive lonely childhood? his traumatic time at war ? his life wasn't easy at all, and mostly because of the opressive environment his money, gender and status brought him

2- ROCHESTER WOULD BE A BETTER PARTNER THAN MOST FEMINIST PARTNERS
Some of his poems are agressive towards women which makes it fair to criticize him for that, but countless others show a understanding about women , that they have desires , dreams , needs , skills, as much as men , he even appreciated aphra for being talented and expressing herself outside social norms that most men even to this day , specially feminist men would find negative and be offended by it , it could be argued that Rochester has proto feminist elements in his work !!

3- IS THIS REALLY THE PATH TOWARDS LIBERATION?
Rochester was loud , chaotic , creative ,outside the box thinking like aphra !! it was extremely easy for people to criticize and judge her unfairly because of those strong amazing elements her personality had , and the author is doing the same as the people who abused and shamed her did , he is a very easy target to pick, it's fair to criticize him for some things he did and said , but at least do it in a fair way , if we feel the same empathy towards authentic interesting people like aphra fighting against society's oppressive structures , we should at least try to understand anyone who was similar to her and try to not do the same things to them that our oppressors did to us

[Christen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, the book was okay. It's hard to have over 450 pages on a woman that left only her writings to speak for herself. All the info you can find on a female spy is conjecture and hearsay. Writing a biography with on a female with no provable past and fluid possibilities, the biographer focuses on the men that were possibles lovers, colleagues and Kings that may have used her services. So writing about the first female in England earning from her craft, the author had to construct most of her history through men - fitting.

I do realized writing about someone who didn't share or keep their past is hard. I had a hard time distinguishing this biography about a female with all the pages on men.

[Anne Herbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed and scrupulously researched, this biography gives a clear picture of both the time and its subject. Janet Todd teases out very modern-sounding views from Aphra Behn's life and work, particularly about the roles and choices available to men and women. We think we've come to these conclusions recently - not so, it would seem by this account, and by evidence from Behn's writing. Writing of themes demanded by audiences of the Restoration era and conscious always of needing to earn a living, she has been dismissed as 'bawdy', yet this is not a criticism levelled at her male contemporaries. Todd reveals that Behn's work was often a political commentary on events and people of the time.

[Holly Cruise]

You know someone's put the work in when about two-thirds of their subject's Wikipedia page is directly referencing their book! If you want to read about Aphra Behn then you have two choices, read the Wikipedia page which paraphrases this book or treat yourself to this book.

We know so little about Aphra's actual life, but Todd has gathered every fact that does exist, every surviving comment from or about Aphra, plus done an insane level of close reading of her plays, poems and novels. Short of us all clubbing together to build a time machine to send Todd back for a face-to-face interview, I think she's everything humanly possible, and she's very upfront about it.

[Geoff Cain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It helps provide context to a very interesting writer. I have read criticisms of Todd's work, that it contains a lot of speculation. Aphra Behn was a complex person who can warrant plenty of speculation! It is one of those books that will send you down some really fascinating paths. The bibliographies alone are worth the price of admission. Also, the parallels to our own time politically are startling.

[Alyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually didn't finish this. I think this will be useful for scholars of Behn, but even for someone who has a scholarly background, I found it a bit dry. Too much analysis and summarizing of her literary works--I wanted more about her and her life.

[Sarah Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An energetic portrayal of a unique life.

[T. Jacobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aphra Behn was a fascinating figure. Virginia Woolf was right, all women owe Aphra Behn immense gratitude. Highly recommend learning more about this strong, intelligent, outspoken woman.

[Kate]

Roderic - Charlotte

[Art Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This commentary is for the Kindle version of "Aphra Behn: A Secret Life." The amount of detail about the life of 17th Century Aphra Behn, about her plays and their reception, and about the Restoration period and its playwrights and their scene makes for an astounding accomplishment. One is invited into that muddy reservoir of time and helped to wade through it along a submerged path of documentation by an energetic, sure-footed guide. Never overwhelmed, one emerges on the other side feeling richer for the adventure.