Böcker av Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn (1640-89) was both successful and controversial in her own lifetime; her achievements are now recognized less equivocally and her plays, often revived, demonstrate wit, compassion and remarkable range. This edition brings together her most important comedies in a single volume: The Rover, her best-known play; The Feigned Courtesans, a lively comedy of intrigue; The Lucky Chance, a comedy with a bitter edge, which takes a satirical look at marriage customs; and the dazzling and popular farce, The Emperor of the Moon. All the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation.

Announcing a new series of Drama Classic Collections.

Published to mark the tercentenary of Aphra Behn's death, this collection contains five varied plays including "The Lucky Chance" and "The Rover". It is edited by a well-known novelist who has also written a biography of Aphra Behn, "The Passionate Shepherdess".

An influential seventeenth-century fable, by a pathbreaking woman writer, about the fall of a black prince.

When Prince Oroonoko s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko (1688) reflects the author s romantic view of Native Americans as simple, superior peoples in the first state of innocence, before men knew how to sin . The novel also reveals Behn s ambiguous attitude to African slavery while she favoured it as a means to strengthen England s power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.