Following Aphra Behn’s death in 1689, Delarivier Manley collected her inheritance and brought forward the discourse around the sexual identity of women and the legitimation of female same-sex attraction. She’s one of the “fair triumvirate of wit” with Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood, a term coined by Irish critic James Sterling.
Pathetic Behn, or Manley’s greater Name;
Forget their Sex, and own when Haywood writ,
She clos’d the Fair triumvirate of Wit.
(note: “Pathetic” is here used in the sense of “dramatic”, “evoking pathos”).
She’s today’s profile on my Patreon.
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