Aphra Behn (1640-89) was both successful and controversial in her own lifetime; her achievements are now recognized less equivocally and her plays, often revived, demonstrate wit, compassion and remarkable range. This edition brings together her most important comedies in a single volume: The Rover, her best-known play; The Feigned Courtesans, a lively comedy of intrigue; The Lucky Chance, a comedy with a bitter edge, which takes a satirical look at marriage customs; and the dazzling and popular farce, The Emperor of the Moon. All the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation.

This is the first new full-scale anthology of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama in over sixty years. Concentrating on plays from the heyday of 1660-1737, it focuses especially on Restoration drama proper (1660-1688) and Revolution drama (1689-1714), with a smaller selection of plays from the early Georgian period (1715-1737) and a glimpse at the later Georgian period’s “laughing comedy” (1770s and 80s). It includes nine sub-genres (heroic romance, political tragedy, personal tragedy, tragicomic romance, social comedy, subversive comedy, corrective satire, menippean satire, and laughing comedy), with the preponderance of exposure given to the jewel of this theatre, its comedy. The core canonical plays from the era—from Dryden’s All for Love and Behn’s The Rover to Congreve’s The Way of the World and Sheridan’s School for Scandal—are all here, but so are a remarkably wide range of non-canonical works. There are many more plays by women than in any previous general anthology of drama of the period. Also included are a number of works from the neglected 1660s, whose comedies feature delightful, subversive, levelling folk elements. In all there are forty-one plays; each is fully annotated and prefaced with an historical introduction. Also included are a general introduction, head-notes for each genre, and a glossary.

Elfenbein takes on the absorbing subject of homosexuality in British Romantic writing, showing the centrality of disreputable desires to the works of Romantic male authors--from William Beckford to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Blake--as well as to the writings of lesser-known but equally significant female authors of the period.

This is a novel virtually forgotten by modern readers, but one that deserves reassessment with this critical edition. Raised by guardians, Louisa’s fate is intertwined with the neighbouring Stanley family, including the jealous younger daughter, Armida – whose husband Lord Belmour openly admires Louisa and which propels the plot forward.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is renowned as the first professional woman of literature and drama in English. Her career in the Restoration theatre extended over two decades, encompassing remarkable generic range and diversity. Her last five plays, written and performed between 1682 and 1696, include city comedies (The City-Heiress, The Luckey Chance), a farce (The Emperor of the Moon), a tragicomedy (The Widdow Ranter), and a comedy of family inheritance (The Younger Brother). These plays exemplify Behn's skills in writing for individual performers, and exhibit the topical political engagement for which she is renowned. They witness to Behn's popularity with theatre audiences during the politically and financially difficult years of the 1680s and even after her death. Informed by the most up-to-date research in computational attribution, this fully annotated edition draws on recent scholarship to provide a comprehensive guide to Behn's work, and the literary, theatrical and political history of the Restoration.