human
Oroonoko, Mrs. Aphra Behn states that her strange and romantic tale is founded on facts, of many of which she was an eye-witness. This is true. She was born at Wye, England, July 10, 1640, the daughter, it is said, of a barber. As a child, she went out to Dutch Guiana, then an English colony named after the Surinam River, returning to England about 1658. After the death of her husband, in 1666, she was dispatched as a spy to Antwerp by Charles II., and it was she who first warned that monarch of the Dutch Government's intention to send a fleet up the Thames. She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It was while in Dutch Guiana that she met Oroonoko, in the circumstances described in the story. No doubt she has idealised her hero somewhat, but she does not seem to have exaggerated the extraordinary adventures of the young African chief. In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had become famous--or, rather, notorious--as a writer of unseemly plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by relating the story of Oroonoko's life. There are few plots of either plays or novels so striking as that of
gpt
Oroonoko.