Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Before we get into Today's Saturday Classic, just
Speaker 1: a quick reminder we have a live streaming event coming
Speaker 1: up on March tenth. You can find all the information
Speaker 1: about that and buy tickets at looped live dot com.
Speaker 1: We also have the ticket link pinned up at the
Speaker 1: top of our Facebook and our Twitter. We are super
Speaker 1: excited and hope folks will join us for that. Okay,
Speaker 1: coming up, we have an episode on Mary Sydney, Herbert,
Speaker 1: Countess of Penbroke, who is the first woman known to
Speaker 1: have published an English language play that happened in and
Speaker 1: as we were recording this forthcoming episode, I had a
Speaker 1: moment where I thought, when did Afriban do this same thing?
Speaker 1: The answer is almost eighty entire years later, Mary Sydney,
Speaker 1: your title is safe. Um. Aside from that, Afraban's life
Speaker 1: of spy work and writing was a pretty exciting one.
Speaker 1: So we're bringing that episode out as Today's Saturday Classic.
Speaker 1: It originally came out on March man Joy, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today's podcast is a request
Speaker 1: from many listeners once again, and they include Georgia, Bree, Laura, Anna, Lauren,
Speaker 1: and Tabitha, who asked for it after I had actually
Speaker 1: already started working on it, and I'm sure many other people.
Speaker 1: It moved up to the top of the list after
Speaker 1: sort of tangentially coming up in our Ira Frederick Aldridge episode.
Speaker 1: Aldridge played a character called Orinoco in The Revolt of Surinam,
Speaker 1: and that was an adaptation of the play Orinoco by
Speaker 1: Thomas Southern. And that was an adaptation of Orinoco, a
Speaker 1: short work of fiction by today's subject Afraban. There is
Speaker 1: really not a lot that's conclusively known about the life
Speaker 1: of Afraban, who, in addition to being a spy, was
Speaker 1: also a dramatist and a poet, a novelist, a translator,
Speaker 1: and probably the first woman in English literature known to
Speaker 1: have made a living as a writer. Even though she
Speaker 1: was prolific in her work, her gender meant that the
Speaker 1: sorts of institutions that were mostly keeping up with the
Speaker 1: details of writers and artists lives at the time did
Speaker 1: not really include her. Since she wasn't an aristocrat, there
Speaker 1: was no official family history, and shouldn't really keep a
Speaker 1: diary or write a memoir or or corresponding a lot
Speaker 1: of letters, at least not many of that actually survived.
Speaker 1: And yet, even though there is so little concrete information,
Speaker 1: she's the subject of multiple biographies, and some of them
Speaker 1: are quite lengthy. Uh. With so little actual documentation to
Speaker 1: go on, a lot of these sort of pick up
Speaker 1: tiny pieces of the historical record and then try to
Speaker 1: glean details of her life from her written work. And
Speaker 1: this means that a lot of biographies about her are
Speaker 1: very heavily subject to interpretation. They tend to be influenced
Speaker 1: a lot by the biographers focus and their interpretation of
Speaker 1: her body of work. Uh. And in some cases, if
Speaker 1: you've read the words, probably and may have, you've read
Speaker 1: like a quarter of the thing at least. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna do our best on this one. I feel like
Speaker 1: you're describing some sort of Afroban biographical mad libs kind
Speaker 1: of is. I mean, every biography is influenced by the biographer,
Speaker 1: even if you're trying, you know, even if the biographer
Speaker 1: is trying really hard to have a very objective stance.
Speaker 1: This is particularly true with Afriban because there's so much
Speaker 1: that's like trying to piece together a teeny little puzzle
Speaker 1: with itty bitty pieces to make a whole life out
Speaker 1: of yeah, with big gaps in the puzzle, So it
Speaker 1: won't s eries you. Having listened to that introduction, that
Speaker 1: there is very very little known about Afra Ban's early life,
Speaker 1: and most of what we do know has been reconstructed,
Speaker 1: as Tracy just mentioned, by following the threads available, a
Speaker 1: lot of which are other people's claims about her, and
Speaker 1: then the logical conclusions are drawn from there. So it
Speaker 1: is generally agreed that she was born sometime around sixteen forty,
Speaker 1: probably to a family who lived in why A village
Speaker 1: in Kent, England. Colonel Thomas Culpepper claimed that Afraban's mother
Speaker 1: was his wet nurse and her father was reported to
Speaker 1: be a barber, so this makes the most likely candidates
Speaker 1: for her parents, Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson. They had a daughter,
Speaker 1: e Free spelled e A F F R E y,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the many many variations in
Speaker 1: spelling for the name Afra at the time. This young
Speaker 1: e Free was baptized on December fourteenth of sixteen forty,
Speaker 1: although some sources report that as the day of her birth.
Speaker 1: With her mother as his wet nurse, Afra would have
Speaker 1: been considered Thomas culpeppers foster sister, and the cool Peppers
Speaker 1: were a prominent family in the area. This connection to
Speaker 1: the cool Peppers would have given Afra access to far
Speaker 1: more educational opportunities and a wider social circle than she
Speaker 1: would have had as just the daughter of a wet
Speaker 1: nurse in a barber Although we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of details about the specifics of her childhood and her adolescence,
Speaker 1: we do know that Afra grew up during a period
Speaker 1: of huge chaos and change. The English Civil Wars began
Speaker 1: when she was still a toddler, and this is a
Speaker 1: series of wars that obviously could be at least a
Speaker 1: whole episode all by themselves. So very briefly, the English
Speaker 1: Civil Wars also involved Scotland and Ireland, and they grew
Speaker 1: out of a conflict between King Charles the First and
Speaker 1: parliament about who ultimately had control over the military. Following
Speaker 1: an uprising in Ireland. During the English Civil Wars, the
Speaker 1: Parliamentarians faced off against the Royalists in a series of
Speaker 1: conflicts that ultimately led to a victory for the parliamentarians,
Speaker 1: the execution of Charles the First in sixteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: the exile of his son Charles the Second, and the
Speaker 1: political rise of Oliver Cromwell, first Lord Protector of the
Speaker 1: Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The total death toll
Speaker 1: in England was almost two hundred thousand. Obviously, that is
Speaker 1: that it was like the tiniest possible description of the
Speaker 1: English Civil Wars. During the interregnum years that followed from
Speaker 1: sixteen forty nine to sixteen sixty, the nation was no
Speaker 1: longer actively at war with itself, but it still had
Speaker 1: its fair share of strife. Many of those in Parliament
Speaker 1: were Puritans, and they started enforcing Puritans standards and views
Speaker 1: for the rest of the nation. Cromwell himself had a
Speaker 1: reputation as a radical and a fanatic, and his actions
Speaker 1: during the Civil Wars had included, among other things, a
Speaker 1: massacre in Ireland. Throughout the interregnum, royalists continued to work
Speaker 1: toward the goal of restoring the monarchy. There's some speculation
Speaker 1: that toward the end of the interregnum, Ben was already
Speaker 1: beginning her career as a spy by secretly carrying messages
Speaker 1: for Royalist organizations. She would have been connected to these
Speaker 1: organizations once again through Thomas Culpepper. Oliver Cromwell died in
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty eight, and by sixteen sixty one Charles the
Speaker 1: Second had been returned to the throne. So by the
Speaker 1: time Aframan hit her twenties, England had already been through
Speaker 1: a lot, and with Charles the Second's return, English life
Speaker 1: dramatically changed once again and a lot of circles. The
Speaker 1: restoration was met with a huge, hedonistic, fairly drunken party,
Speaker 1: and it was in this environment that Afra Bend really
Speaker 1: flourished a whole lot more than during the more puritanical
Speaker 1: interregnum years. In sixteen sixty three, when she was in
Speaker 1: her early twenties, Ben traveled to Suriname, and this would
Speaker 1: later become the setting for her work of fiction Orinocco.
Speaker 1: Orinocco is often discussed as part of Ben's earlier work
Speaker 1: because her visit there would have happened, as we just said,
Speaker 1: when she was in her early twenties, but in reality
Speaker 1: this piece wasn't published until shortly before her death. Orinocco
Speaker 1: tells the story of a prince from the Gold Coast
Speaker 1: and what is now Ghana, who's invited aboard a ship
Speaker 1: and then enslaved before being sold in Surinam, and that's
Speaker 1: where he meets the book's narrator. This narrator is an
Speaker 1: english woman who had come to Suriname with her father,
Speaker 1: but he died during the sea voyage. Some biographies actually
Speaker 1: take this plot point from Orinoco and apply it to
Speaker 1: Ben's real life father, although he had likely died by
Speaker 1: the early mid sixteen sixties. It's completely unclear whether this
Speaker 1: aspect of Orinoco is supposed to be autobiographical. There's also
Speaker 1: debate about whether the book's narrator is supposed to be
Speaker 1: a stand in for Ben herself, and that part similarly faggy.
Speaker 1: But since Orinocco does contain a lot of detail about
Speaker 1: Surinam and people who really lived there in the sixteen sixties,
Speaker 1: it's easy to think of it as evidence that the
Speaker 1: trip to Surinam really did happen, regardless of whether the
Speaker 1: story it tells is supposed to be autobiographical. Also, although
Speaker 1: Ben's own views on slavery are pretty hard to tease
Speaker 1: out from her writing, Orinocco itself was considered an abolitionist
Speaker 1: work of fiction in both the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of attempts to try to figure
Speaker 1: out what her racial views were based on the content
Speaker 1: of her writing, and the most logical conclusion is that
Speaker 1: she had a lot of the prejudices that we're sort
Speaker 1: of ingrained in society, especially English society at the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like when you read Orinocco, it a lot
Speaker 1: of it is very sympathetic to the people who are
Speaker 1: enslaved in the book, but it's it's sort of a
Speaker 1: most like proto abolitionist text, like it was definitely read
Speaker 1: that way for a couple of centuries. But there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in it that is, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously laced with implicit biases and racism because it was
Speaker 1: written in the six century, even though Orinoco itself as
Speaker 1: a book didn't come out until much later. Afroman was
Speaker 1: writing while in Surinam, including an early draft of a
Speaker 1: play called The Young King or a Mistake. Like several
Speaker 1: of Ben's other plays, it's a tragic comedy and it
Speaker 1: tells the story of a royal brother and sister brought
Speaker 1: up in opposite roles because of a prophecy. The boy
Speaker 1: is quote kept from his infancy and a castle on
Speaker 1: a lake, ignorant of his quality and of all the world,
Speaker 1: besides never having seen any humane things save only his
Speaker 1: old tutor, while the girl is quote bred up in
Speaker 1: war and designed to reign in place of her brother.
Speaker 1: It plays around with gender and ideas of masculinity and femininity,
Speaker 1: which is a hallmark of Ben's later work as well.
Speaker 1: Ben's trip to Surinam wasn't particularly long. She returned to
Speaker 1: England in sixteen sixty four, and not long after she
Speaker 1: was given an audience with King Charles the Second to
Speaker 1: report on what she had witnessed there. It's not completely
Speaker 1: clear whether the king saw this as part of her
Speaker 1: spy career, but she definitely spied for him later, and
Speaker 1: we're going to start talking about that, but first we're
Speaker 1: going to pause and have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. About the same time as she returned from
Speaker 1: Surinam in sixteen sixty four, after Ben married a man
Speaker 1: whose name was as you would conclude Ben or maybe
Speaker 1: being described as quote a merchant of Dutch extraction. It
Speaker 1: might have been the Great plague of London which struck
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five that killed Ben's husband. He was
Speaker 1: dead by sixteen six six. On top of the plague,
Speaker 1: England was once again at war. The Second Anglo Dutch
Speaker 1: War began on March fourth of sixteen sixty and this
Speaker 1: was part of a series of four wars between England
Speaker 1: and the Dutch Republic and their allies. The first three
Speaker 1: were largely trade wars, but the fourth was in response
Speaker 1: to Dutch involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Regardless of
Speaker 1: whether Ben had officially been doing spy work during the
Speaker 1: Interregnum or in Surinam, she definitely was during the Second
Speaker 1: Anglo Dutch War because in the code name Astraea. Ultimately
Speaker 1: reporting to the Secretary of State, Lord Henry Bennett, she
Speaker 1: was assigned to travel to Antwerp, which is now in
Speaker 1: Belgium but was then in Spanish Netherlands to meet with
Speaker 1: William Scott. Scott's father, Thomas, had been the man who
Speaker 1: signed Charles the first death warrant, for which he was
Speaker 1: later executed, and Scott himself was essentially acting as a
Speaker 1: double agent. He was gathering intelligence for England while also
Speaker 1: informing on the English to the Dutch armed with bribe
Speaker 1: money and the promise of a pardon. Ben's mission was
Speaker 1: to figure out whether Scott had worthwhile intelligence, and if
Speaker 1: he did, to get that intelligence back to England. Ben
Speaker 1: was likely chosen for this mission because she and Scott
Speaker 1: had met in Surinam. They had a bit of a
Speaker 1: flirtation there. In theory, this flirtation was nothing serious enough
Speaker 1: to jeopardize Ben's judgment, but it was enough of an
Speaker 1: existing connection to Scott to sort of soften him up
Speaker 1: a little. She was given passage to Spanish Flanders and
Speaker 1: enough money to take care of her own needs during
Speaker 1: a short stay there. Her brother, who was in the military,
Speaker 1: was temporary temporarily released from service to act as her chaperone.
Speaker 1: Apparently Lord Bennett wasn't wasn't aware that she was a widow,
Speaker 1: which would have given her a little more autonomy than
Speaker 1: an unmarried woman would have had. She received her money
Speaker 1: and instructions in July of sixteen sixty six, and she
Speaker 1: was an antwerp by August, but her time as a
Speaker 1: spy was not very successful. She flirted with Scott until
Speaker 1: he finally agreed to pass her information, but then he
Speaker 1: got her to agree to leave Antwerp and meet him
Speaker 1: in the Hague. And if she did that, not only
Speaker 1: was she very likely to be captured, but she was
Speaker 1: also sure to run out of her already dwindling supply
Speaker 1: of money. And this started the pair of them on
Speaker 1: a cycle of back and forth, with him getting her
Speaker 1: to agree to leave Flanders, and then her pulling back
Speaker 1: on that agreement and another hiccup. This back and forth
Speaker 1: between Scott and Ben also got tangled up with one
Speaker 1: William Corney, a merchant from Amsterdam who was also passing
Speaker 1: intelligence back to Lord Bennett. Before long, the three of
Speaker 1: them were just continually trying to undermine one another in
Speaker 1: this convoluted backstabby triangle, word of which spread to London
Speaker 1: and started to threaten Ben's reputation. The idea that Ben's
Speaker 1: previous flirtation with Scott wouldn't be a threat to her
Speaker 1: also didn't really pan out, as Corny became a greater
Speaker 1: threats to both of them. They started to rely on
Speaker 1: and confide in each other in a way that didn't
Speaker 1: really leave Ben a whole lot of power to try
Speaker 1: to get the man to give her information. Eventually, Scott
Speaker 1: fled Flanders out of fear that Corny was going to
Speaker 1: kill him, and once he was gone, Corny focused all
Speaker 1: his attention on Ben, tailing her and forging reports in
Speaker 1: her name to discredit her. Scott wound up in prison,
Speaker 1: and although he did keep writing to Ben, he couldn't
Speaker 1: learn much while behind bars, and she had no way
Speaker 1: to pay for a passage home. When Scott was released
Speaker 1: from prison in sixteen sixty seven, he was also banished,
Speaker 1: leaving Ben with no way of getting whatever intelligence he
Speaker 1: still had. Throughout all of this, Ben was using ciphers
Speaker 1: and codes to send information back to London, but very
Speaker 1: little of this information was of actual value. She's often
Speaker 1: reported as having passed on a warning of the Dutch
Speaker 1: raid on Medway, which took place in June of sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. This raid was a devastating blow to the
Speaker 1: British Navy, and while this is technically true, she did
Speaker 1: send that information, other agents also delivered the same information
Speaker 1: and none of it was heated, not even when another
Speaker 1: agent gave Lord Bennett a very specific warning about the
Speaker 1: upcoming attack after Ben had already returned to London, and
Speaker 1: getting back to London required Ben to beg for the
Speaker 1: funds to do so She'd been so low on money
Speaker 1: that she'd handed over all her possessions to her innkeeper
Speaker 1: as collateral so she wouldn't lose her lodgings along with
Speaker 1: everything else. Although she was able to get a couple
Speaker 1: of loans to pay off the worst of her debts,
Speaker 1: it was only after numerous letters and lots of borrowing
Speaker 1: that she was able to get someone to pay for
Speaker 1: her passage. And it's unclear who that was, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the administration that had sent her to Antwerp in
Speaker 1: the first place. Even though her spy life was not
Speaker 1: very effective, it still was pretty crummy that she was
Speaker 1: sent on this mission with no way of getting back
Speaker 1: home out of hostile territory. According to most accounts, after
Speaker 1: Afroban's returned to England in the spring of sixteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: she wound up in a debtor's prison. There's very little
Speaker 1: detail on this. She had written multiple letters to the
Speaker 1: people who had recruited her into the life of espionage
Speaker 1: and to other contacts that she had, all in an
Speaker 1: effort to pay off her debts, and it seems as
Speaker 1: though she either eventually did get someone to loan her
Speaker 1: enough money to get out of prison or she made
Speaker 1: arrangement arrangements to pay her debt off gradually as she
Speaker 1: was able to earn enough money to do so, And
Speaker 1: the way that she earned that money was by writing,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that after we once
Speaker 1: again paused for a quick sponsor break. After she got
Speaker 1: out of the debtor's prison, Afra Bean was able to
Speaker 1: make something of a fresh start for herself. By the
Speaker 1: summer of sixteen sixty seven. London had recently been through
Speaker 1: both the Great Plague and the Great Fire, and although
Speaker 1: the raid on Medway had taken place at the mouth
Speaker 1: of the Thames River and not up in the city,
Speaker 1: it had destroyed much of the British naval fleet and
Speaker 1: block hated the city, which left the already shaken people
Speaker 1: living there feeling particularly defenseless. So in a fairly dispirited
Speaker 1: and anxious city, Ben was able to quietly make a
Speaker 1: space for herself, renting lodgings and working as a copyist,
Speaker 1: probably copying the sorts of material people would want handled
Speaker 1: with more discretion than a commercial printing press could allow.
Speaker 1: While copying definitely would have helped her make ends meet,
Speaker 1: it was not really enough to live comfortably, and soon
Speaker 1: Ben was also writing and publishing poems. She adopted her
Speaker 1: code name Austraya for a pseudonym for a lot of
Speaker 1: her written work as it was published at the time.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for Ben, King Charles the second loved the theater,
Speaker 1: and he chartered to theater companies known as the King's
Speaker 1: Company the Duke's Company. The King's Company had the rights
Speaker 1: to a lot of existing plays, including works by Shakespeare
Speaker 1: and Ben Johnson. The Duke's Company didn't, meaning there was
Speaker 1: a market for newly written plays. The plays themselves were
Speaker 1: often Body and Blue, with women allowed on the stage
Speaker 1: rather than having female roles played by men. It's unclear
Speaker 1: exactly how Ben first got her foot in the door
Speaker 1: as a playwright through her spy work. She did no
Speaker 1: Thomas Killigrew, who was head of the King's Men and
Speaker 1: later the Master of the Revels, but it was the
Speaker 1: Duke's Company and not the King's where her work first debuted.
Speaker 1: Of her first play to be staged there was The
Speaker 1: First Marriage or the Jealous Bridegroom, a tragic comedy, which
Speaker 1: opened on septem Ben was much savvier about playwriting as
Speaker 1: an occupation than she had been about her espionage career.
Speaker 1: She wanted to make sure she kept the rights to
Speaker 1: her plays, and she wanted them to be published, which
Speaker 1: would give her an additional source of income to her
Speaker 1: plays were also published during her lifetime, although the first
Speaker 1: printing of The Forced Marriage, which was probably rushed to
Speaker 1: follow the place performance and take advantage of that publicity,
Speaker 1: was full of errors, herosism, things printed and completely the
Speaker 1: wrong order. It was kind of a mess. Her next
Speaker 1: play to be staged opened just a few months later,
Speaker 1: and it was named The Amorous Prince, and like its
Speaker 1: name suggests, it's full of seductions and it plays around
Speaker 1: a lot with gender and cross dressing in a way
Speaker 1: that would become a frequent theme in Ben's works. Ben
Speaker 1: would go on to write nineteen plays, including the two parts.
Speaker 1: The Rover was seventeen of them stage during her lifetime.
Speaker 1: She wasn't the first woman to write for the British stage,
Speaker 1: but the idea of a woman playwright was still rare
Speaker 1: enough that her position was relatively unique, and she got
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism for the more risky content of
Speaker 1: her work, which was full of innuendo and double entendres.
Speaker 1: This was particular literally true since in both her plays
Speaker 1: and her novels, she seemed to blur the line between
Speaker 1: her narrator and herself. Even so, she pointed to similarities
Speaker 1: in the work of her contemporaries and predecessors as evidence
Speaker 1: that it would not have been frowned upon if she
Speaker 1: were a man. As the theater gradually fell a little
Speaker 1: bit more out of favor in the sixteen eighties, Ben
Speaker 1: shifted her focus to writing novels, and she penned sixteen
Speaker 1: works of fiction, all of which have narrators who were
Speaker 1: either obviously female or have no specified gender. She also
Speaker 1: continued to write poetry throughout her career, and although some
Speaker 1: of her poems were incorporated into her plays and fiction,
Speaker 1: many of them were meant for a smaller audience. They
Speaker 1: often contained inside references to what was going on in
Speaker 1: London society and politics, sometimes with names changed, but otherwise
Speaker 1: easily recognizable to people in the nome. Some of her
Speaker 1: poems were essentially social and political commentary, rendered in verse
Speaker 1: and only really understandable if you knew the context of
Speaker 1: what was going on around her. Much of Ben's work,
Speaker 1: especially in poetry, was romantic and sensual, and even erotic,
Speaker 1: with both women and men as the subjects of her
Speaker 1: love poems, some of which also played with themes of
Speaker 1: androgyny and gender fluidity. The relationships depicted in her dramas
Speaker 1: are all over the map in terms of gender and
Speaker 1: sexual orientation. In terms of her personal life, her most
Speaker 1: public relationship during her time as a writer was with
Speaker 1: John Hoyle, whose own life with threat was threaded through
Speaker 1: with lots and lots of scandal, including his relationships with
Speaker 1: other men. As Ben's writing career became more lucrative, she
Speaker 1: became increasingly more active in London society. She developed a
Speaker 1: reputation for being witty and charismatic, and of liking to drink.
Speaker 1: She earned the nickname the Incomparable Australia, and in her
Speaker 1: poetry people called her the successor to Sappho. After more
Speaker 1: than twenty years making a living as a writer, Afroban
Speaker 1: died on April sixteenth nine, at roughly fifty years old.
Speaker 1: A few days later, a piece called an Elegy upon
Speaker 1: the death of Mrs A. Ben, The Incomparable Australia, written
Speaker 1: by quote a young lady of quality, was published. It read,
Speaker 1: in part quote, let all our hopes to spare and
Speaker 1: die our sex forever shall neglected lie. Aspiring man has
Speaker 1: now regained the way to them. We've lost the dismal day.
Speaker 1: The first biography of her came out in sixteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: called Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Ben by a
Speaker 1: gentlewoman of her acquaintance, and that was part of her
Speaker 1: collected histories and novels. Although its author was likely Charles Gilden,
Speaker 1: the first uh. This first biography is definitely a mix
Speaker 1: of embellishment, absolute total fiction, and a little bit of fact,
Speaker 1: and it was written in part to try to sell
Speaker 1: the collection of her work with which it was published.
Speaker 1: Even so, that and passages of her fiction that seem
Speaker 1: autobiographical have been picked up and repeated as fact over
Speaker 1: and over throughout the centuries. Although today Afra Ben is
Speaker 1: known as one of the seventeenth centuries most influential playwrights
Speaker 1: and a groundbreaking writer in the genre of the novel,
Speaker 1: she fell sharply out of favor after her death as
Speaker 1: the hedonism and licentiousness and that general drunken party flare
Speaker 1: of the Restoration became socially unacceptable. So did Afraban and
Speaker 1: her work. Critics decried her as a woman of loose
Speaker 1: moral character, and they condemned her work outright. That started
Speaker 1: to change, though, in the early twentieth century, when the
Speaker 1: English writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group picked
Speaker 1: up her life and work as part of feminist history.
Speaker 1: Poet and novelist Vita Sackville West wrote Afra Ben The
Speaker 1: Incomparable Austraia, which was a biographical fiction that seems to
Speaker 1: treat Ben's life as a missed opportunity. Author Virginia Woolfe
Speaker 1: wrote of her quote, all women and together ought to
Speaker 1: let flowers fall upon the tomb of afro Ben, for
Speaker 1: it was she who earned them the right to speak
Speaker 1: their minds. It's kind of funny they both seemed to
Speaker 1: praise her so highly for having made a living as
Speaker 1: a writer. Uh and have an affinity for some of
Speaker 1: the like same sex content of her poems and some
Speaker 1: of which are read as uh like explicitly lesbian love poems.
Speaker 1: But they have this theme, this sort of undertone of
Speaker 1: like I wish she hadn't been writing such garbage in
Speaker 1: terms of like all this very coarse humor and body sexuality. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, today I think folks are a lot
Speaker 1: a lot more accepting of that part of it than
Speaker 1: they maybe were in the nineteen hundreds. Heany so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is
Speaker 1: out of the archive, if you heard an email address
Speaker 1: or a Facebook U r L or something similar for
Speaker 1: the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
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