FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 July 1940, Page 8

FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST

CAREER OF MRS APHRA BEHN. Who was the first English woman to make money by her pen? The answer seems to be Aphra Behn. who lived for 49 years of the 17th century, dying in 1689. No one now reads what she wrote, hut in her day she made a stir, and though she tried to write like a man, and pretended to be one, there were many who knew her secret, and were mazed that a woman should do what she did. We think of her as a graceful, comely woman with brown hair and bright eyes. She was full of life. She had a trick of getting into adventures and getting out of them. She did many things, and did them all well. Baptised at Wye, she was soon off to the West Indies, and in one of her books, a novel about her life there — she has a strange story of a chief whom the gossips said was in love with her. Back in England as a beautiful girl in her twenties, she married a Dutchman. and soon afterwards —when the Dutch war broke out—Charles the Second. who delighted in her wit, sent her c.fT to Holland as a spy. She succeeded in getting information about Cornelius de Witt’s intention to send a fleet up the Thames, and she actually sent word of this to the authorities in London, but they took no notice of it. thinking her mad. When she was coming home she was wrecked, escaping only by the skin of her teeth. Left a widow, and basely treated by the Court which felt no compunction in not honouring its promises. she was driven to write in order to make a living. She wrote plays and novels, all rather coarse, but all in the spirit of the times in which she had the misfortune to live. How many stories and plays she gave the world it would be hard to say. but she was the George Sand of the Restoration, and she deserves remembrance as the first woman full-time author of whom we have any record.