Aphra Behn (née Johnson)

Sitter associated with 4 portraits
Details of Aphra Behn's early life are uncertain. She seems to have journeyed to South America in 1663-4 with her family. On her return to England she was briefly married to Mr Behn, and from 1667 she went to Antwerp as a spy for Charles II. The King failed to pay her and she was imprisoned for debt. Turning to writing to support herself, she wrote at least 19 plays, as well as poetry and, at the end of her life, prose fiction. She is regarded as the first British professional woman writer. Her fictional story Oroonoko (1688), about an enslaved African prince, was later adapted and used in support of the abolition of slavery, although Behn’s attitude appears to be ambiguous and sometimes contradictory; the horrors of slavery are graphically depicted but both slavery and colonialization are seen as acceptable concepts.