Aphra Behn
Oroonoko
or, The Royal Slave
Introduction by Lore Metzger
An influential seventeenth-century fable, by
a pathbreaking woman writer, about the fall of a
black prince.
The first woman in England to make her living by writing, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) combines memoir, exotic travel narrative, and romance to tell the story of the noble Oroonoko, a black man who begins life as a prince and ends it as a slave. The tale depicts the overthrow of a hero by a civilization that considers itself superior to him.
Taken up by reformers in the long battle against the slave trade, reprinted and imitated countless times, Oroonoko remains a popular tale that introduces powerful themes onto the literary stage.
Aphra Behn flourished in the
cosmopolitan world of the London playhouse and the court. It was she, Virginia
Woolf wrote, "who earned [women] the right to speak their minds."
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