Three Faces

‘Three Faces’ artfully brings tolife Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to make her living as a professionalwriter. How did the daughter of a Kentish barber and a wet nurse come torub shoulders with the highest in the land and be buried in Westminster Abbeyas a celebrated poet, playwright and novelist?It is 16 April 1689. Aphra Behn is dying. She looks back on a life requiring her to hide herbackground, her feelings and her loyalties, showing different faces todifferent people. On His Majesty’s secret service, she has travelled widelyon the Continent and to the American colonies, later condemning the iniquitiesof the slave trade in one of the earliest novellas in English. Her life hasbeen marked by civil war, the execution of a king, the short-lived Englishrepublic and the heavy hand of Puritan preachers, the licentiousness of theRestoration, the Plague, the Great Fire of London, theAnglo-Dutch Wars and the Glorious Revolution.

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