Behn, Aphra - Jane Spencer (essay date 1986)

Jane Spencer (essay date 1986)

SOURCE: "Three Self-Portraits: Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, Jane Barker," in The Rise of the Woman Novelist from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 41-74.

Duffy on the neglect of Behn:

Literary survival is largely a matter of fashion and chance. No greater gods preside over it and we deceive ourselves if we think they do, that we have a just appraisal of what is excellent and worth preserving from the millions of words ever written. The work of a single writer, of a school or of a whole era can be dismissed to the dustheap where broken reputations lie about like discarded toys. If anyone disputes this I should remind him of just one instance: the resurrection job T.S. Eliot and others had to do on the metaphysicals, and in particular on one of the greatest of English writers, John Donne, earlier this century.

It's therefore no surprise that the woman on the...

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