BookCat

Aphra Behn died #onthisday in 1609. She was one of the first women to earn a living by writing plays and poetry, publishing under the pseudonym Astrea. She was also employed by Charles II as a spy during the Dutch War. She is remembered in Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, with the lines: ‘All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.’