Charlotte Cornell has been working on Behn’s early life for her PhD at the University of Kent. She is the Cabinet Member for Culture and Heritage on Canterbury City Council, as well as worings freelance as a historical researcher and creative writing teacher.
Aphra Behn - the first professional woman writer - has been accused of trying to ‘scratch herself out’ in order to hide her origins. Is this really true? How could a barber’s daughter from Canterbury possibly go on to become one of the most popular playwrights of the seventeenth century? How did she learn to read and write? Who were the Kentish connections that eventually helped her career? Did she really help to slip one of Charles II’s many mistresses a laxative? Charlotte Cornell sets out to answer these and some of the many other questions that have plagued Behn biographers for centuries.
Tickets: Aphra Behn