“Literary pimping” or Business as Usual? Aphra Behn and the Book Trade

Abstract

ABSTRACT Aphra Behn's relationship with her publishers has frequently been characterized as gendered and unequal, framing Behn as a powerless woman deliberately exploited by “literary pimps” such as Samuel Briscoe and Charles Gildon. This notion plays into both the well-established “actress/writer as prostitute” trope and the idea of Grub Street hackery. But this implication of a sleazy and exploitative commercial relationship between writer and publisher, and moreover one inflected by sex, relies on uninspected assumptions about the book trade. Was Behn as professional writer really treated any differently because of her sex? This paper investigates the relationship between Behn and the booksellers by looking at the usual practices of the book trade itself. It considers Behn's imprints both during her lifetime in the 1670s and 1680s and in the decade after her death, arguing for a better understanding of the post-Restoration trade. Successful practitioners (women as well as men) necessarily served their own commercial interests, valuing the marketable and profitable above the literary. Viewed in this context, Behn's printed output and her treatment by publishers, in life and after death, owed more to the habits of the book trade than to her sex.