Review of “The Aphra Behn (Europe) Conference: Restoring Aphra Behn,” 2–4 July 2024

While scholars have known about Aphra Behn for a long time and some of our past students surely remember a thing or two about Oroonoko (1688) or The Rover (1677), the larger public still has yet to know, appreciate, and honor the first professional female writer in England. The conference “Restoring Aphra Behn,” held in Canterbury in July 2024, had a double focus on both scholarly sharing and public outreach.Many events were open to the public as well as to conference attendees. There was a talk by Christine Charlesworth, who created the statue of Aphra Behn that will be installed in front the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, Canterbury’s municipal history institution, in 2025. Lucky participants enjoyed a walking tour of Aphra Behn’s Canterbury led by the knowledgeable Charlotte Cornell, the Canterbury member for council services, culture, and heritage. (While critics have disagreed on her birthplace, Cornell’s doctoral work on Behn in the Canterbury archives unearthed new, very convincing documentary evidence that Harbledown, just outside the old city walls, was her home.) Cornell led us first to the baptismal font in St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Harbledown, where Behn first entered public life. While established as Anglican, the church had a firebrand dissenting priest in a staunchly Anglican town during Behn’s time in the city. The background of Behn’s formative years included events such as plague, civil war, and the “Plum Pudding” riots, which broke out after the Commonwealth outlawed Christmas celebrations. We sauntered within the city walls, where Behn’s father tried for many years to get permission to be a barber—and practiced illegally until he could—past the site of the inn that he once owned, the Queen’s Head. We concluded in the West Tower, where her father was held in debtor’s prison until he was released by Cromwell and finally disappeared from the Canterbury records.Elaine Hobby, Hannah Straw, and Cornell partnered with the Beaney to mount an exhibition explaining life in Canterbury in the 1640s and the 1650s and how the social structure under which Behn grew up as well as her childhood experiences and her family had bearing on her life and writing. There were paintings of Stuart nobility, maps and seventeenth-century images of the slave trade, documents relating to the Behn family, and enjoyable activities for families such as hoisting buckets of food up to the windows of the debtors’ prison and dressing as people would have in the seventeenth century. An additional event was a visit to the Canterbury Cathedral Archives, where maps, city charters, and select baptismal and marriage records relating to members of Behn’s family were displayed. Other treasures included a model of an eyeball that a local natural philosopher brought back from a trip to Italy in the seventeenth century and the single red rose (now dried and pressed between the pages of a court ledger) that Christopher Marlowe was once compelled to present to an adversary in order to resolve a charge of public brawling. A one-hour version of The Amorous Prince (1671) played for three evenings and was experimental and energizing.One of the conference’s events was arranged “to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn,” as Virgina Woolf directed us, “for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds” (98). Elaine Hobby through sheer force of will and love arranged with Westminster Abbey a ceremony that did just that. It was the first time such a ceremony has been performed since 1989, when the matchless Maureen Duffy made the arrangements. Perhaps the most delightful aspect of this literary pilgrimage was the crowd of tourists who stopped to observe the ceremony and wondered who could deserve flowers, throngs of admirers, and velvet ropes. It was a delight to edify and interest them. The ceremony, performed by the Venerable Tricia Hillas, canon in residence, included a portion of Behn’s paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer and a blessing on the poet’s ability to “perceive the world afresh.” It was thrilling to observe the wreath laid and moving to know that Behn is not only not forgotten but also increasingly remembered.Another notable event was the surprise discovery of another copy of a first edition (1688) of Oroonoko. The public exhibition at the Beaney prompted Anna Astin to bring along a book that was part of the inventory of her parents’ Kent-based antique shop, one that had laid quietly on a bookshelf in the family’s homes over the years. Close inspection by Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox, the editor of Oroonoko for the upcoming Cambridge edition of Behn’s short fiction, determined that it is indeed a first edition. One more treasure to share with the public, one that will likely be housed in Behn’s hometown.The conference itself contained a varied array of strong scholarship on Behn and her contemporaries. Panels covered performance theory and practice, rewritings (there are over twenty fictional version of Behn’s life), miscellanies, Aphra’s nuns, pedagogy, geography, book history, and masculinity. It was truly heartbreaking not to be able to attend four panels at once. Look for a publication, however. The scholars presenting at the conference deserve to have their work made available for others to applaud, challenge, and build on.Finally, there are exciting new possibilities afoot. Loveday Ingram is attempting to mount a North American tour of her vibrant and original 2016 production of The Rover for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Naomi Miller and Lisa Walters (among others) are working on further public outreach regarding Behn’s and her contemporaries’ lives, work, and influence via documentaries, YouTube episodes, Instagram, etc. A Netflix series, Monstrous Beauty, that follows the life of a fictional female Restoration dramatist will soon be available to us all. The opportunities to engage with Behn are enticing and seemingly endless.I have mentioned only part of the work and play that occurred over three days in Canterbury. The conference as a conference was a scholarly success, but as a celebration of the life of Behn, as an extension of this quirky and talented author to the world at large, it was a triumph. Aphra Behn has been released to the public once again. Prepare for false rumors, fiction interpreted as fact, disdain, and complaints that her work is too hard. But also prepare for more public notice, more creative interpretations, more interest, and more respect for the first professional woman writing in England, Aphra Behn.