Aphra Behn (1640-89) was a popular poet, author of the influential novel Oroonoko, and one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theater. Behn led an unusually active and eventful life for a woman of her era, traveling widely—to Surinam in 1663 and to Antwerp in 1666, where Charles II sent her as a spy during the Anglo-Dutch war. Returning to England she spent some time in a debtor's prison and subsequently devoted herself to writing, publishing numerous poems and almost twenty plays between 1670 and 1689.

Because of the overtly political nature of her work, much of Behn's writing appeared anonymously and in many different versions. The Poetry of Aphra Behn is the first accessible reprinting of Aphra Behn's verses since the seventeenth century. Encompassing the entirety of her oeuvre, from satirical writings to songs, love poems, and verse epistles, the book is a testament to the life and mind of a remarkable woman.