"Aphra Behn's work has always been subject to critical and moral fashion and her literary reputation has only recently been secured, especially by feminist and new historicist critics. The essays collected here on Behn's drama, prose and poetry represent a range of contemporary critical views, some placing Behn within the history of her times and others illuminating her through modern critical theory and debates on gender and race, Janet Todd provides a stimulating introduction mapping Behn's literary reception, situating the work of the critics in a broad literary and cultural context and portraying Behn as a newly politicised figure at the close of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.