> Aphra Behn (/ˈæfrə bɛn/; 14 December 1640? – 16 April 1689) was a British > playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As > one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke > cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations > of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles > II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a > probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She > belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, > Lord Rochester. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the > turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue > and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted > most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter > of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write > a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after. > > She is famously remembered in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "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." Her grave > is not included in the Poets' Corner but lies in the East Cloister near > the steps to the church. > > *Aphra Behn* - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn)