Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is renowned as the first professional woman of literature and drama in English. Her career in the Restoration theatre extended over two decades, encompassing remarkable generic range and diversity. Her last five plays, written and performed between 1682 and 1696, include city comedies (The City-Heiress, The Luckey Chance), a farce (The Emperor of the Moon), a tragicomedy (The Widdow Ranter), and a comedy of family inheritance (The Younger Brother). These plays exemplify Behn's skills in writing for individual performers, and exhibit the topical political engagement for which she is renowned. They witness to Behn's popularity with theatre audiences during the politically and financially difficult years of the 1680s and even after her death. Informed by the most up-to-date research in computational attribution, this fully annotated edition draws on recent scholarship to provide a comprehensive guide to Behn's work, and the literary, theatrical and political history of the Restoration.
| ISBN: | 9781108840743 |
| Publication date: | 25th March 2021 |
| Author: | Aphra Behn |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 954 pages |
| Series: | The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: plays and playwrights Plays, playscripts Literary studies: general Literary reference works Literary studies: poetry and poets Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Gender studies: women and girls Theatre studies |