Who was Aphra Behn? A look at a trailblazing 17th-century poet, writer, spy

She inspired Virginia Woolf, wrote of gender-fluidity, and was likely overshadowed by the growing legacy of Shakespeare in her time.

A dramatist, poet and one-time spy, Aphra Behn wrote of gender-fluidity in liquid verse, crafted takedowns of slavery in prose, and inspired the likes of Virginia Woolf. But her extraordinary life and work remain little-known.

Some say this is because she was a woman; others because she lived in the Shakespearean era, a period that left little room for other writers. It didn’t help that she was declared scandalous in her own time, and faded from the mainstream.

Interestingly, she