Editing Aphra Behn in the digital age
- Project timeframe
- 1 July 2016 - 30 June 2020
- Theme
- Textual editing and interpretation
- Amount awarded
- 752,246.61
- Funder ID
- Arts And Humanities Research Council
Project leader: Prof Elaine Hobby
Aphra Behn (1640-89) is generally accepted as the first professional woman writer in English; she was one of the most prolific and important authors of drama, fiction, verse, and translations in her period.
Her works include twenty plays successful on the London professional stage in the 1670s and 1680s, and Oroonoko, the first fiction to describe a slave-uprising. Editing Aphra Behn in the Digital Age is making the range and variety of Behn’s works more widely available in an eight-volume, thoroughly annotated edition with Cambridge University Press. We are also conducting computer-aided investigations of anonymous works to establish whether they might be Behn’s, and collaborating with The National Archives, theatre companies and a Canterbury museum to make Behn’s life and works widely known.