The History of the Nun; or, The Fair Vow Breaker
by Aphra Behn
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Aphra Behn, nee 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, show more (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). show lessTags
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104+ Works 4,113 Members
Aphra Behn is often considered the first Englishwoman to support herself as a writer. She was unquestionably the leading woman playwright of the Restoration period. Behn is also notable for her poetry and fiction. While still in her twenties, she traveled with her family to Surinam, in South America, where she witnessed a slave insurrection, much show more like the rebellion that figures prominently in her novel Oroonoko (1688), a work that introduced the character of the noble savage. Behn was well connected at court and for a brief time was sent to Antwerp as a spy. Around 1670, with the help of John Dryden, she established a career in the theater, and, during the following two decades, rarely was her work absent from the London stage. Among the comedies that bear the special stamp of her libertine, feminist, and Tory political views are The Dutch Lover (1673), The Feign'd Curtezans (1679), and her best-known works, The Rover (1677) and The Rover, Part II (1681). Readers seeking an introduction to the skill and sensibility of Aphra Behn will do well to look into her lyric poetry, which is often represented in recent anthologies of women writers. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The History of the Nun; or, The Fair Vow Breaker
- Original title
- The History of the Nun; or, The Fair Vow-Breaker
- Original publication date
- 1689
- First words
- Of all the sins incident to human nature, there is none of which Heaven has took so particular, visible, and frequent notice and revenge as on that of violated vows, which never go unpunished, and the cupids may boast what th... (show all)ey will for the encouragement of their trade of love, that Heaven never takes cogniscence of lovers' broken vows and oaths, and that 'tis the only perjury that escapes the anger of the gods.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She was generally lamented and honourably buried.
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Statistics
- Members
- 6
- Popularity
- 3,045,166
- Rating
- (2.50)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 1
