Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave (Best Novel Classics) - Softcover

Behn, Aphra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1535481404 ISBN 13: 9781535481403

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

Classics for Your Collection:

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This book is a historical romance/tragedy about a captured king betrayed into slavery in English Suriname and also how he's miraculously reunited with his fiancee.

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 (the author) visit to Surinam, Oroonoko reflects the author's romantic views of native peoples as being in "the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin." The novel also reveals Behn's ambiguous attitude toward slavery: while she favored it as a means to strengthen England's power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.

The book is well written, moves briskly, and provides a fascinating early glimpse not only of the slave trade but of indigenous inhabitants of South America as well.

The book is written by Aphra Behn (1640-1689), who is considered the first female English novelist.

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About this title

About the Author:

Aphra Behn (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

Behn was born during the buildup of the English Civil War, a child of the political tensions of the time. One version of Behn's story has her travelling with Bartholomew Johnson to Surinam. He was said to die on the journey, with his wife and children spending some months in the country, though there is no evidence of this. During this trip Behn said she met an African slave leader, whose story formed the basis for one of her most famous works, Oroonoko.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1535481404
• ISBN 13: 9781535481403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72