“... way around the fact that the novels of Jane Austen were free from the coarse sexual innuendoes of Aphra Behn, Defoe, Fielding or Smollett, while Dickens ignored the subject of sex altogether. Michael Mason’s main problem is to determine how prudery affected behaviour. Was it merely a veneer of hypocrisy, covering up a very different sexual ...”

“... to the French line than the English – even if one can see the influence of English writers like Aphra Behn, Mary Davys and Eliza Haywood, with whom she was undoubtedly familiar. She also seems to have read the pious Penelope Aubin – against whom she reacts, as she was to react, in a more complicated manner, against Richardson. Both stylistically and ...”

“... of the male ancestors he omits with the women. Alive to the gaps in Ian Watt’s account as far as Aphra Behn et al are concerned, she seems oblivious of the fact that the rogue’s tale of Kirkman and Head is likewise an absentee. This enables her to insinuate the notion that the suppressed context for the founding fathers is overwhelmingly one provided ...”

“... cuts off the vision of connections between the new poets and ‘Orinda’ (Katherine Philips), Aphra Behn and Jane Barker, as well as their connections to the work of Rochester and Dryden. (Women wrote elegies for both of these earlier ‘Augustans’: in 1700 The Nine Muses, a collection of poems entirely by women, laments Dryden’s death.) Not only ...”

“... as regent. The Braganza family continued to rule Portugal until 1910.On Charles II’s death, Aphra Behn dedicated a consolatory poem to Catherine, addressing her as ‘the great pattern of piety and virtue’. Despite not securing the succession, despite being Catholic, Catherine managed to be perceived as an ideal consort. Royal wives were – and ...”