Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works

‘We are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards, and the support of rogues’.

When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko’s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn’s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko (1688) reflects the author’s romantic view of Native Americans as simple, superior peoples ‘in the first state of innocence, before men knew how to sin’. The novel also reveals Behn’s ambiguous attitude to African slavery – while she favoured it as a means to strengthen England’s power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.

This new edition of Oroonoko is based on the first printed edition of 1688, and includes a chronology, bibliography and notes. In her introduction, Janet Todd examines Aphra Behn’s views of slavery, colonization and politics, and her position as a professional woman writer in the Restoration.

Prose:
The Fair Jilt
Oroonoko
Love-Letters to a Gentleman

Plays:
The Rover
The Widow Ranter

Poems:
Love Armed
Epilogue to Sir Patient Fancy
The Disappointment
To Mr. Creech (under the name of Daphnis) on his excellent translation of Lucretius
A letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford, written in the last great frost
Song: On her loving two equally
To the fair Clarinda, who made love to me, imagined more than woman
On Desire: A Pindaric
A Pindaric poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet