Her successful intrusion into the hitherto all-male literary field had shocked and affronted many. The deepest shock was felt by the male writers and critics. Their biased and vindictive remarks and politicking made her furious, and she responded in kind, and justly so. She suffered all the hardships, the slingstones and fiery crosses, of the pioneer, but she blazed the path for a host of women who earned their living by the pen.

As a child, she had been nervous and imaginative and often ill. Nevertheless, she survived the six-thousand-mile rough and dangerous voyage to Surinam, an English possession in north South America on the Atlantic Ocean. Her adopted father, John Amis, was not so lucky. He died en route, a victim of a "fever." He had been appointed lieutenant general of Surinam through the influence of a relative, Lord Willoughby of Parham. Despite the loss of her father, she enjoyed her life, and she took full advantage of the exotic land. Here she met a black slave who had been stolen from his tribe in West Africa and brought to Surinam. His stories of his homeland and his exalted position there, whether true or not, were the source of that romantic novel she was to write years later, Oroonoko, or, The Royal Slave.

"Those were the happiest years of my life. There 'twas always spring, always April, May and June. The trees bore at once all degrees of leaves and fruits. There were groves of oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, nutmegs and noble aromatics continually exuding fragrances. Gaily colored macaws, parrots and canaries flashed above the water lilies in the lagoons and trenches. The twa-twa bird had a cry like a silver gong. The kiskadee called 'Qu'est-ce que dit? Qu'est-ce que dit?' I became versed in the strange language of the blacks, half-African, half-English, and heard of Gran Gado, the Grand God, his wife Maria, and his son Jesi Kist. Indians came down from the mountains carrying bags full of gold dust.

"It was not all lovely and paradisiacal, of course, I fell sick with malaria once and almost died."

In 1658, at the age of eighteen, she returned to London. At nineteen she was married to a much older man, a wealthy Dutch merchant, Jans Behn. Though she had no money, her good looks and wit and learning had inspired love in Mr. Behn. Through his connections, hi introduced his wife into the court of Charles II.

"And is it true," Frigate had said, "that you were the king's mistress?"

"His Majesty did ask me to bed with him," she had said, "but at that time I was married. I had the conception then, which I later abandoned, that adultery was sinful. Moreover, I loved my husband, no Dutch lump he, and I knew that he would be terribly hurt if I betrayed him."

By 1665, her husband had lost his immense fortune because of the sinking by storms or capture by pirates of the ships bearing his merchandise. He died from a heart attack in early 1666, leaving his widow with only fifty pounds. By the time she had gotten employment, she had only forty pounds left. Through friends at the court, she became an espionage agent and went to Antwerp. She was told that any information she could get on the Dutch fleet would be welcome. But her main assignment was to spy on renegade Englishmen living in Holland. There were many there who had fled England and were conspiring to overthrow the present monarchy.

"A female James Bond," Frigate had said.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"I was especially charged to make friends with an exile, William Scott, and endeavor to get him to return to England. He wouldn't do so until he got a full pardon, but toward that end he agreed to collaborate with me. By then, I was broke. I sent a letter to James Halsall, the king's cupbearer, my immediate superior. I asked him for funds to continue my spying. I got no answer, so I wrote a second missive, telling him how expensive Antwerp was and that I had only been able to feed myself and keep a roof over my head by pawning a ring. Again, no reply. Once more I wrote to Halsall and, at the same time, to Thomas Killigrew, a friend who was also in the secret service. I stated that I needed fifty pounds to pay debts. I also sent news of the number and disposition of the Dutch ships, of the Dutch army, and of my progress with Scott. After receiving no replies, I wrote in utter despair to the secretary of state, Lord Arlington. I told him all that I had done, how impoverished I was, and that soon I'd be in a Dutch debtor's prison. But he did not answer."

"Did you then think about going over to the Dutch?" Burton had asked.

"I? Never!"

"Even then, the British government was mistreating and neglecting its soldiers and spies," Burton had said.

"I wrote again to Lord Arlington and begged him to send one hundred pounds to pay off my debts and return to England. Again, silence. So, there I was, not a penny of pay for my services, not a single word from my chiefs. What was I doing there but making a piteous fool of myself, a poverty-stricken dunce? Finally, I succeeded in getting a loan of one hundred and fifty pounds from a friend in England, Edward Butler, and I sailed back home in January, year of Our Lord 1667."

Weary, sick and heavily in debt, Aphra crossed the Channel from Antwerp to London. Here she saw the ruins of the city laid low by the Great Fire. Yet the terrible blaze had not been without its good. It had consumed the hundreds of thousands of rats and millions of lice that had spread the Great Plague. Aphra, however, had little time to think about either the fire or the plague. Mr. Butler pressed her for repayment, and Lord Arlington and the king kept on ignoring her just requests for her back pay. The inevitable came; she was thrown into debtors' prison.

"Where," Aphra had said, "if you had no money to buy food, you starved to death. That is, if the diseases running through the prisons like wild redskins on a raid did not strike you down first. The plagues were democratic, however. They killed you, high or low, poor or with money in your purse, young or old."

All the City prisons had been burned down or made useless by the Great Fire. Newgate was hastily repaired, but Aphra was sent to Garonne House in South Lambeth. The filth and overcrowding had been bad enough before the fire. They were ten times worse now because of the lack of prisons and the great numbers of citizens whose houses and property had been destroyed. Unable to pay their debts, they, too, went to gaol.

"I lived through it, though there were times when I wished that I would die. The stench of unwashed bodies and clothes, the stink from the sick suffering from the bloody flux, the noisome odor of the open sewers, the wailing of frightened and sick children, the stealing, the screaming of the mad and the furious, the coughing and retching, the fights, the brutality, the utter lack of privacy ... if you would piss or shit you must do it in a cell with a dozen others watching or laughing at you ... if my mother had not borrowed money to send me food, half of which was confiscated by the guards for their own benefit... I would have wasted away until I was too weak to resist the diseases floating in the sickening air of that hellhole. Whatever sins I had sinned, before I was in gaol or after, I paid for them. 'Twas a purgatory without flames, flames that we would have welcomed to keep us warm."

Two of the guards offered to give her a meal a day with meat, vegetables and wine if she would have intercourse with them both at the same time.

"If my mother had not sent me enough to keep me from completely starving, I suppose I would have consented to their demands sooner or later, probably sooner. My empty belly was sucking wind, and I told myself, though I did not really believe it, that the guards were preferable to starvation. However, one of the guards, in addition to being unusually filthy, one-eyed, humpbacked, and rotten-toothed, had the French disease. I don't know ..."