The Unfortunate Happy Lady

Aphra Behn, née Johnston (1640-1689) was a Restoration poet, novelist, playwright, feminist and spy, considered by many to be the first English professional female writer. Unappreciated for years, she is now rightly regarded as a highly talented, innovative and prolific author. Her most famous work is a novel, Oroonoko (1688) which tells the tragic love story of its eponymous hero, an African forced into slavery. Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1683) is an epistolary novel, (the first ever written) and an innovative and pioneering work. Her other works include: The Forced Marriage (1670), The Dutch Lover (1673), The Feigned Courtesans (1679), The Roundheads (1681), The City Heiress (1682) and Poems Upon Several Occasions (1684).