Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources by Mary Ann O’Donnell

Abstract

217 gray plod, so at odds with Akenside’s own poetic luxuriance, but profit there undoubtedly and frequently is. As a bonus , this volume also includes an edition of Akenside’s nonmedical prose, in appendices. These comprise just over twenty letters, a theological essay (staunch in style, flimsy in thought) written by Akenside at twenty-one, and four essays of 1746 from The Museum, a periodical that Akenside edited capably during its eighteen-month life (1746–1747). Why so few? Because shortly after The Museum stopped appearing , Akenside, in his late twenties, markedly retrenched his short, precocious career as a man of letters—he had begun to publish when he was sixteen— to attend more to his medical life. Mr. Dix’s fullest discussion, seventy pages, of course falls to The Pleasures of Imagination (1744), an extraordinary blending of poetry, philosophy, and learning for someone not yet twentythree . This discussion, plus another twenty pages about the drastic revision of the poem as The Pleasures of the Imagination (a posthumous, unfinished publication in 1772) is the best account of this critical achievement I know. The rest of the book works its way thoughtfully through Akenside’s smallish body of poetry, mainly lyric—odes and their ilk—but also his satire An Epistle to Curio , between Pope and Churchill in date and quality, which carries forward Pope’s late motif of the satirist as victim , but here with a pathos that reminds one of the kinship between satire and sentiment. The last sentence of The Literary Career of Mark Akenside tells us that ‘‘Careers are, in one way at least, like arias: we find them easier to admire if they end on a high note.’’ The career of Akenside , who died in his very late forties, failed at this criterion; but with this book I think the career of Mr. Dix, who died in 2007 at fifty-one, met it. Eric Rothstein University of Wisconsin MARY ANN O’DONNELL. Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. 2nd ed. Aldershot : Ashgate, 2004. Pp. xix ⫹ 711.£65. Behn has been lucky in her bibliographer . When the first edition of Ms. O’Donnell’s magisterial work came out in 1986, it transformed the study of a writer who—strange to recall now— was once neglected. With meticulous care Ms. O’Donnell recorded Behn’s original, translated, and edited texts; works to which she contributed; and attributions . I found it a wonderful gift. The huge expansion of Ms. O’Donnell ’s bibliography testifies to the burgeoning scholarship that the first edition did so much to promote. Editions of Oroonoko, for example, have leaped from 25 in the first edition to 55 in the second (plus online texts). Most are new editions from 1985 up to 2002, the new cutoff point. Of note are the translations, most into European languages, but one into Japanese: Behn, always a writer of wide appeal, has gone global. The secondary bibliography has expanded from 661 to 1610 items, but the real increase is even greater since late entries, as well as additions to the previous list, have been interpolated into the sequence with small letters after the numbers. The annotations to the secondary bibliography, ranging from brief indication of content to minireviews, are an excellent guide. Appendix IX records productions of the plays, noting reviews as well, making it possible to consider Behn’s recent per- 218 formance history. Thirty-four productions of The Rover are recorded between 1979 and 2001, including one of both parts of the play in 1996, and French and German translations, and there are two new adaptations, including Biyi Bandele’s 1999 RSC production. There are productions of other Behn plays, and five different plays about her. Ms. O’Donnell’s work has contributed to her revival: this second edition provides an indispensable guide, and sets a standard for the bibliographers of other writers. Jane Spencer University of Exeter SUSAN WISEMAN. Conspiracy and Virtue : Women, Writing, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford, 2006. xii ⫹ 384. $99. In the opening chapters that provide an overview of Conspiracy and Virtue, Ms. Wiseman makes it clear that hers is a book not about the...