The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn

Description

Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration, providing more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influencing the development of the novel. Behn's work straddles the genres of drama, fiction, poetry and translation. With its full bibliography, detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life, this Companion is essential to studying her work.

Derek Hughes is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. Janet Todd is Francis Hutcheson Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow.

'Taken as a group, the essays here assembled make for one of the best volumes to emanate from the excellent Cambridge Companions to Literature series.' Choice '... illuminating ... These essays present Aphra Benn's artistic choices as determined by genre, political contingency and an acute sensitivity to theatrical success, as much as by proto-feminism.' Times Literary Supplement 'In short, the Companion offers in a brilliantly condensed form the recent debate on Aphra Behn with valuable introductions to general aspects of her work, e.g. on pastoral or social comedy, and is this indispensable to her students when reading Aphra Behn - in all her diversity and ambiguity.' Cornelia Wilde, Buchhesprechungen