Rare Aphra Behn first edition goes on show in Canterbury

An incredibly rare first edition 1688 copy of Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko has gone on display at The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge in Canterbury.

The book has been added to the museum’s current summer exhibition, which is celebrating the life and work of locally-born Aphra Behn, the first professional woman writer in the English language. It is free to visit and runs until Sunday 18 August in The Beaney’s Special Exhibitions Room.

Its inclusion in the exhibition comes after the book’s owner, Kent-based Anna Astin, came to visit the Beaney with her daughter Christina, bringing the book with them to show museum staff.

The Astin family discuss the book with Behn expert Professor Elaine Hobby from Loughborough University (centre) and Cllr Charlotte Cornell (standing right)

Anna had taken ownership of the book as a girl more than 50 years ago when she chose it from the bookshelves of her father’s shop on Fulham Road in London, where he sold antiques.

But despite knowing it was old, Anna and Christina were not aware of its rarity. Only 13 copies are known to exist globally and all of these are housed in the best libraries and universities in the UK and America, including the British Library, Oxford University and Yale University Library.

The Astin family has now kindly donated it to the Beaney for the remainder of the exhibition.

Cabinet member for Culture and Heritage, Cllr Charlotte Cornell, said: “We were absolutely stunned when we discovered the truth about the book and it is so generous of the Astin family to allow us to display it in the museum over the next few weeks.

“It is an incredibly important, and very valuable, cultural artefact. Early books by female writers are hugely in demand at the moment, so this discovery is both rare and timely.

“You can very clearly tell from both looking at and handling the book that this has been much-loved, read and shared over the more than 300 years it has existed. It is now, of course, very fragile but it also remains in a good condition to read and is as compelling now as it would have been all those years ago.

“Our exhibition has been very popular but we really expect this to bring visitors flocking to the Beaney, including many who have already been and want to come again to get a glimpse of something so rare and important in our literary history.

“When we put on the exhibition we were in fact hoping that publicity might help to uncover one of the lost portraits of Aphra Behn – at least two lost portraits are known to be out there somewhere. With the discovery of the book, however, perhaps we’ve found something even better.”

The above sketch by George Scharf shows a missing portrait of Aphra Behn that is being sought

Oroonoko is a novel about the sufferings of an enslaved African prince in colonial-era Surinam. It is taught in universities all over the world now, and over the last 20 years has been recognised as a key text that helped to inspire the abolitionist movement.

It is also considered one of the first novels written in the English language, being written 31 years before Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. No copy of this book has been sold on the open market in over the last 50 years.

The Beaney is in Canterbury High Street and is open daily (except Mondays) between 10am and 5pm (11am to 4pm on Sundays). Entrance is free.

Find out more information about the Aphra Behn exhibition on The Beaney website.

Published: 19 July 2024

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