Playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester.

Aphra Behn was the first women in England to earn a living as a writer.  Very little is known about her background, who her parents were, and where she was born.  Aphra lived for a time in Surinam, an experienced that inspired her first novel, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (1688)  She was married and widowed by age 25.  She secured employment as a spy for King Charles II and was sent to Belgium in this capacity. The King refused to pay her return trip, however, and after borrowing the funds to return, she was thrown into debtor`s prison. After leaving prison she became a successful London playwright and then a novelist.