Aphra Behn was baptised on December 14^th  in 1640.  

Although she was a prolific and well established writer in her own lifetime facts about her remain scant and difficult to confirm. What can safely be said though is that Aphra Behn is now regarded as a key English playwright and a major figure in Restoration theatre. 

In fact even where and to whom she was born are subject to discussion. 

According to which account you read – and there are many – Aphra was born in Harbledown, near Canterbury. Another that she was born to a barber, John Amis and his wife Amy.  Or again she was born to a couple named Cooper. 

In the “The Histories And Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn” (1696) it is written that Aphra was born to Bartholomew Johnson, a barber, and Elizabeth Denham, a wet-nurse. However a claim by Colonel Thomas Colepeper, who states he knew her as a child, wrote in Adversaria that she was born at "Sturry or Canterbury" to a Mr Johnson and that she had a sister named Frances. Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, a poetic contemporary, says that Aphra was born in Wye in Kent, and was the ‘Daughter to a Barber.' 

None of these accounts can be relied upon and it follows that with so few facts the early part of her life cannot be clearly illustrated. 

However what can be accurately suggested is that Aphra was born in the rising tensions to the English Civil War. Obviously a time of much division and difficulty as the King and Parliament, and their respective forces, came ever closer to conflict. 

But still facts do not reveal themselves in any quantity.  As a young woman a version exists of Aphra’s journeying to Surinam with Bartholomew Johnson. He was said to have died on the journey, leaving his wife and children spending some months in the country.  It is during this trip that Aphra claims to have met an African slave leader. These experiences formed the basis for one of her most famous works, “Oroonoko”. In “Oroonoko” Behn Aphra gifts herself the position of narrator and her first biographer accepted the proposition that Aphra was indeed the daughter of the lieutenant general of Surinam, as in the story. There is little evidence to support this case, and none of her contemporaries acknowledge this, or any, aristocratic status. There is also no evidence that Oroonoko existed as an actual person or that any such slave revolt, is anything but an invention. 

However it is possible that she acted a spy in the colony.  Possibilities exist. Perhaps Aphra re-wrote her own history as and when it suited her needs at the time. 

The common method of gathering information in these times was Church records and for a few, tax records. Aphra Behn is mentioned in neither.  As well as Aphra Behn or Mrs Behn she was, at times, also known as Ann Behn, Mrs Bean, agent 160 and Astrea. 

Shortly after her supposed return to England from Surinam in 1664, Aphra may have married Johan Behn (also written as Johann and John Behn). He could have been a merchant of German or Dutch extraction, possibly from Hamburg. He died or the couple separated that same year, however from this point we can be sure Aphra used the title "Mrs Behn" as her professional name. 

There is some suggestion that Aphra may have been a Catholic or at least leaned towards this school of faith. She once commented that she was "designed for a nun." Many of those around her were Catholic, such as Henry Neville who was later arrested for his Catholicism, and this would have aroused suspicions during the anti-Catholic fervour of the 1680s. She was a monarchist, and her sympathy for the Stuarts, and particularly for the Catholic Duke of York may be demonstrated by her dedication of her play “The Rover, Part II” to him after he had been exiled for the second time. Aphra was dedicated to the restored King Charles II. As political parties emerged during this time, Aphra became a Tory supporter. 

By 1666 Aphra had become attached to the court. Domestically the Plague was sweeping the Nation and the Great Fire was about to erupt through London. In foreign affairs England and the Netherlands had engaged in The Second Anglo-Dutch War from 1665. Aphra was recruited as a political spy in Antwerp on behalf of King Charles II, possibly in league with Thomas Killigrew. 

This is probably the beginning of more accurate records on Aphra’s life. Her code name is said to have been Astrea (though there are others), a name under which she later published many of her writings. Her chief duty was to establish a relationship with William Scot, son of Thomas Scot, a regicide who had been executed in 1660. Scot was believed to be ready to become a spy in the English service and to report on the activities of the English exiles who were thought to be plotting against the King. Aphra arrived in Bruges in July 1666 with a mission to secure Scot into a double agent, but there is evidence that Scot would betray her to the Dutch. 

Aphra however found life as a spy not quite the romantic interlude that many assume would be the case. She arrived unprepared; the cost of living shocked her, and after a month, she had to pawn her jewellery.  King Charles was slow in paying, either for her services or for her expenses whilst abroad. She had to borrow money so she could return to London, where she spent a year petitioning King Charles for payment unsuccessfully. A short while later a warrant was issued for her arrest, but little to suggest it was actually served or that she went to prison for her debt. 

The death of her husband and her debts seemed to push her towards a more sustainable and substantial career. Aphra began work for the King's Company and the Duke's Company players as a scribe. These were, in fact, the only two licensed theatre groups in London. The theatres had been closed under Cromwell and were now re-opening under Charles II and a more liberal atmosphere.  Theatre technology was being imported from Europe and being integrated into the staging of some plays.  It was a great moment on which to embark upon a career in theatre. 

Aphra who had previously only written poetry now embarked on such a career. Her first, “The Forc’d Marriage”, was staged in 1670, followed by “The Amorous Prince” (1671). After her third play, “The Dutch Lover”, fails to please Aphra had a three year lull in her writing career. Again it is speculated that she went travelling again, possibly once again as a spy. 

After this sojourn her writing moves towards comic works, which prove commercially more successful. Her most popular works included “The Rover” and “Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister” (1684–87). 

With her growing reputation Aphra became friends with many of the most notable writers of the day. This is The Age of Dryden and his literary dominance. As well as his friendship she includes also those of Elizabeth Barry, John Hoyle, Thomas Otway and Edward Ravenscroft, and was also attached to the circle of the Earl of Rochester. 

Aphra often used her plays to attack the parliamentary Whigs claiming, "In public spirits call’d, good o’ th’ Commonwealth... So tho’ by different ways the fever seize...in all ’tis one and the same mad disease." This was Aphra’s criticism to parliament which had denied the king funds. 

From the mid 1680’s Aphra’s health began to decline.  This was exacerbated by her continual state of debt and descent into poverty. 

In 1687 she published A Discovery of New Worlds, a translation of a French popularisation of astronomy, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, written as a novel in a form similar to her own work, but with her new, religiously oriented preface. 

As her end approached in 1689 it became increasingly hard for her to even hold a pen though her desire to continue to write was unquenchable. In her final days, she wrote the translation of the final book of Abraham Cowley’s Six Books of Plants. 

Aphra Behn died on April 16^th 1689, and is buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality." She was quoted as stating that she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry." 

Her legacy is broad.  Firstly as a woman she broke down many of the barriers which regarded only men as writers, especially in the commercial arena.  In all she would write and have performed 19 plays, contribute to more, and become one of the first prolific, high-profile female dramatists in these Isles. 

In her own golden age of the 1670s and 1680s she was one of the most productive playwrights in Britain, second only to the immense talents of the Poet Laureate John Dryden. 

Much of her work has been criticised for its bawdy tone as well as its masculine form but needs must and she was working to live, to survive, and to widen her spread as an author. 

She received widespread support from many other successful writers including Thomas Otway, Nahum Tate (also a Poet Laureate), Jacob Tonson, Nathaniel Lee and Thomas Creech. 

Aphra is now rightly seen as a key dramatist of the seventeenth-century theatre.  Her prose vitally important to the on-going development of the English novel. 

Following Aphra’s death new female dramatists such as 'Ariadne', Delarivier Manley, Mary Fix, Susanna Centlivre and Catherine Trotter acknowledged Behn as an inspiration who opened up the public space for women writers to be accepted. 

In succeeding centuries her appreciation has been volatile.  For instance in the morally reserved Victorian clime both the writer and her works were ignored or dismissed as indecent. The Victorian novelist and critic Julia Kavanagh wrote, "the disgrace of Aphra Behn is that, instead of raising man to woman's moral standard, she sank woman to the level of man's coarseness". 

However by the 20th century, however, Aphra’s fame was back in fashion.  Since then her works have been well appreciated and her place in our literary pantheon assured.