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[...] a Devil on't the Woman damns the Poet. 
-- Aphra Behn, Preface to The Lucky Chance 
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was not the first woman writer; neither was she the only
woman writer of her day. But Aphra Behn holds the singular distinction of being the
first professional woman writer in the English language. That's right, ladies -- Aphra
Behn was the first woman writer who did it for money. 
It was a natural choice for this young woman, a recent spy for the crown and a widow
at the age of 26, to turn to selling herself (in a manner of speaking) in order to
survive.Many other women of the period did so; but instead of novels and plays, they
sold something much more fundamental and far more common. Single women,
whether spinsters or widows, often allowed themselves to be kept by rich men of the
commons and nobility alike. Mrs. Behn chose not to sell herself but her wits and
words, and was branded a whore for her efforts.
Not much is known of her origins. Most biographers seem to agree she was born Aphra
Johnson in or around
1640, and that she acquired her education and her connections at court through a noble
childhood friend for
whom her mother acted as a wet-nurse. She very likely traveled with her family to Surinam
in her early 20s; at the
age of 26, after having been briefly married to a Mr. Behn (of which nothing is known),
she went to Antwerp as a
spy for the crown. The mission was singularly unsuccessful, and she returned to England a
debtor (very likely
serving a short term in prison). 
When she got out, she began to write, at first for bread, but soon she made it clear that
she was writing not only
for money but for fame -- and also to fulfill what she called my masculine part, the poet
in me -- clearly asserting
her rights as an artist despite her gender. She was not interested in modesty or in
timidity, and during her career
tackled several genres with equal ease -- a feat certainly not matched by many male
authors of the period.
She was a mere harlot who danced through uncleanness and dared [the male dramatists] to
follow. -- John Doran (19th-century theatre historian) 
The Punk and Poetesse, as she was soon dubbed (punk meaning prostitute), was the single
most prolific and
successful dramatist in Restoration England with the exception of John Dryden, the
country's poet laureate. She,
like Shakespeare before her, took existing bad plays with decent plots and turned them
into very good plays --
unlike Shakespeare, this work of hers was likened to the birthing of bastards. 
Not only content with writing for the theatre, she became one of the first novelists in
the English language, writing a
racy epistolary roman a clef about an affair between a nobleman and his sister-in-law.
Other prose works dealt
unflinchingly with issues of class, politics, gender and race in a way that was not
attempted by many of her male
colleagues. She was also well known for her poetry, much of which was quite erotic (but
not without humor), her
political tracts and propaganda for the Stuart monarchy, and her foreign-language
translations.
Aphra Behn was an outsider and an observer from the beginning, and much of her work
reflects that. She often
played with the image of the prostitute which was from the beginning associated with her
-- selling herself as a
woman writer, but all the time insisted that the pen had no gender, that there was no
topic that was not
appropriate for a woman. Many of her writings explore the question of desire -- who wants
what, and why, and
what keeps them from it -- and often from the female point of view. As a professional
writer, she was the only
woman of the time whose work was created and put out not only for her personal
satisfaction but for the praise
and criticism (and coin) of others.
All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn[...], for it is
she who
earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she -- shady and amorous as she was --
who
makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by
your
wits. -- Virginia Woolf
Unfortunately for Mrs. Behn, the tendency both during her life and after it was to equate
an author's subject
matter with the author's actual life; what in male writers became worldly experience in
her was named
unsalvageable baseness. While she lived, men and women alike vilified her as a whore, and
she was seen as a sort
of prostitute even by those who were her friends. After her death, she was all but
forgotten except as a bad
example; even those who did present her works (often expurgated) usually did so with
apologies. It was
unseemly, monstrous, and undoubtedly unfeminine for a woman to write for money and
repute, and Behn suffered
for it for three centuries. Her work was reviled, belittled and ignored. 
(A memorable opinion from an anonymous writer in the Saturday Review at the end of the
last century: Mrs.
Behn is still to be found here and there in the dusty, worm-eaten libraries of old
country houses, but, as a rule, we
imagine, she has been ejected from all decent society for more than a generation or two.
If Mrs. Behn is to be
read at all, it can only be from a love of impurity for its own sake[...]. It is true
that [her scandalous reputation] did
not prohibit her from attaining honorable burial in Westminster Abbey, but it is a pity
her books did not rot with
her bones.)
Within the last century, however, people are starting to take a new look at Aphra Behn.
Although some
biographers and critics have fallen prey to the (admittedly strong) temptation of merely
portraying Mrs. Behn as a
feminist icon, by virtue of her shady and amorous lifestyle, while ignoring or slighting
her vast catalogue of written
work -- a practice which serves her no better than the former centuries' censure -- we
are now beginning to see
serious, critical and biographical studies of not only Mrs. Behn's important place in the
history of women's writing
but of her work itself. Her writings (many of which have been long out of print until the
20th century) are being
recognized as the groundbreaking pieces that they are, and explored for all their wit,
humor, longing, sadness and
anger, and how those play their roles in the conquest of satisfying one's appetites --
whether emotional, political,
carnal or merely literary. 
In an age where women were expected to use themselves as their only commodity, Aphra Behn
chose to control
her body and sell her thoughts instead. Because of her, writing for women became not only
an expression of
fancies, but, as Virginia Woolf described it, a matter of practical importance. The seed
was planted: women
could earn their keep by their pens, could contribute to their own support, could manage
and even thrive on their
own. By peddling her literary wares and making a living at her craft, Aphra Behn made it
possible for other
women to do so as well. 
All I ask, is for the privilege for my masculine part, the poet in me (if any such you
will allow
me), to tread in those successful paths my predecessors have long thrived in...If I must
not,
because of my sex, have this freedom, but that you will usurp all to yourselves; I lay
down my
quill, and you shall hear no more of me [...]; for I am not content to write for a third
day
only. I value fame as much as if I had been born a hero; and if you rob me of that, I can
retire
from the ungrateful world, and scorn its fickle favors.
-- Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance