Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was a popular poet, author of the influential novel Oroonoko and one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre. She travelled widely - to Surinam in 1663 and to Antwerp in 1666, where Charles II sent her as a spy during the Anglo-Dutch war. On her return to England, she spent some time in a debtor’s prison and subsequently devoted herself to writing, publishing many poems and about seventeen plays between 1670 and 1689.