This long-awaited Norton Critical Edition of Aphra Behn's best-known and most influential work makes available the original 1688 text, the only text pub-lished in her lifetime. The editor supplies explanatory, an-notations and textual notes.

List of Illustrations

Preface

The Text of Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave：A True History

Textual Notes

Historical Backgrounds

Joanna Lipking·The New World of Slavery--An Introduction

Colonizers and Settlers： First Views

   [Montaigne on America]

    From Of Cannibals

    From Of Coaches

   [The Settling of Surinam]

    Lord Willoughby to Lady Willoughby (1651)

    [Lord Willoughby's Prospectus for

      Settlers to Surinam]

    [The Company of Royal Adventurers to Lord

      Willoughby (1663)]

Observers of Slavery, 1654-1712

   Antoine Biet·[They Came Here in Order to Become Wealthy]

   Henry Whistler·[They and Their Seed]

   lean Baptiste Du Tertre·[A Servitude for Life]

   From Great Newes from the Barbadoes

    [Fatal Conspiracy]

   Hans Sloane·[A Very Perverse Generation]

   Christopher Codrington " [All Born Heroes]

    [Mr. Gamble to Governor Codrington]

    [Governor Codrington to the Council of Trade and Plantations]

   Jean Barbot·[Three Accounts]

    [A Wholly Remarkable Meeting]

    [Sharing the Hardship]

    [Together Again, tho' in Bondage]

After Oroonoko： Noble Africans in Europe

   Thomas Southeme·From Oroonoko： A Tragedy

   Richard Steele·The Lover, No. 36

   [Captain Tom, or Adomo Oroonoko Tomo]

    [Tomo at Theater and Court (1731)]

    [Investigation： Commissioners for Trade and Plantations]

    [Captain William Snelgrave's Account (1734)]

    [Archibald Dalzel's Summation (1793)]

   John Whaley·On a Young Lady's Weeping at Oroonoko

   [Oroonoko in France： The La Place Adaptation]

   [The "Prince" and the Play]

     [From The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1749]

     [Wylie Sypher on the Prince and Zara]

     [Horace Walpole to Horace Mann]

Opinions on Slavery

   [A Declaration by the Barbados Colonists (1651)]

   John Locke·From Two Treatises of Government (1690)

     From The First Treatise

     From The Second Treatise： Of Civil Government

   Opinion in Periodicals (1735)

     The Speech of Moses Bon Saam

     The Answer of Caribeus to Moses Bon Saam

   Samuel Johnson·[To Boswell： Dictated

     Brief to Free a Slave (1777)]

   Olaudah Equiano·From The Life of

     Olaudah Equiano (1789)

Criticism

Responses to Behn and Oroonoko, 1682-1948

   Bishop Burner·[To Anne Wharton,

     December 19, 1682]

   Charles Cotton·"To the Admir'd Astrea" (1686)

   From A Miscellany of New Poems (1688)

     "A Pindarick to Mrs. Behn on her Poem

     on the Coronation," Written by a Lady

   [A Session of Poets (ca. 1688)]

   The Athenian Mercury·[The "Athenian Society"

   to a Woman's Love Query (1694)]

   Thomas Southerne·Dedication to Oroonoko (1696)

   "Memoirs on the Life of Mrs. Behn," Written

   by a Gentlewoman of Her Acquaintance (1696)

   Theophilus Cibber, et al.·From Lives of the Poets (1753)

   Andrew Kippis·From Biographia Britannica (1780)

   Clara Reeve·From The Progress of Romance (1785)

   Sir Walter Scott·From Lockhart's Life of Scott (1837)

   The Saturday Review·"Literary Garbage" (1872)

   Algernon Swinbume·["Impassioned Protest" (1894)]

   George Saintsbury·["A Very Inflammable Disposition" (1913)]

   V. Sackville-West·["A Born Bohemian" (1927)]

   Virginia Woolf·["The Freedom of the Mind" (1929)]

   George Sherburn·["An Astonishing Masterpiece" (1948)]

Critical Essays, 1984-1996

   William C. Spengemann·The Earliest American Novel： Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

   Jane Spencer·The Woman Novelist as Heroine

   Robert L. Chibka·[Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction in Oroonoko]

   Laura Brown·The Romance of Empire： Oroonoko and the Trade in Slaves

   Charlotte Sussman·The Other Problem with

     Women： Reproduction and Slave Culture in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

   Mary Beth Rose·Gender and the Heroics of Endurance in Oroonoko

Aphra Behn： A Chronology

Selected Bibliography