Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) was an English playwright, poet, fiction writer and spy who is widely regarded as one of the first professional female writers in the English language. She wrote prolifically for the stage and her literary output was remarkable for both its quality and its audacity in a male-dominated world. Oroonoko is her most famous work, a novella about an enslaved African prince that is considered one of the earliest English novels and a pioneering anti-slavery text. Behn's writing is vivid, politically charged and centuries ahead of its time. Her audiobooks and books bring a groundbreaking literary voice to modern listeners — a woman who wrote with courage and skill in an era that offered women almost no space to do so.