'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' - Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own.
By the time of her death in 1689, the poet, playwright, novelist and politial satirist Aphra Behn had become the first truly professional woman writer in English. Famous for her frank eroticism, enjoyed as much for her 'female sweetness' as for her 'manly grace' she was 'sole Empress of the Land of Wit' - yet two centureis of female modesty were to pass before she could again come into her own.
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