Her most famous novel is Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave. Her gravestone reads: MRS APHRA BEHN DYED APRIL 16 A.D. 1689. Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against ...

Aphra Behn followed Shakespeare and Milton yet ... while her most famous work, 1688’s Oroonoko, the story of a doomed romance, was the first sympathetic view of African slaves in British ...