User:Ingeniousmrsbehn/sandbox

Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is an anonymously published three-volume roman à clef playing with events of the Monmouth Rebellion and exploring the genre of the epistolary novel. It has been attributed to Aphra Behn, but this attribution remains in dispute. The novel is "based loosely on an affair between Ford, Lord Grey of Werke, and his wife's sister, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, a scandal that broke in London in 1682". It was originally published as three separate volumes: Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister (1684), ''Love-Letters from a Noble Man to his Sister: Mixt with the History of Their Adventures. The Second Part by the Same Hand (1685), and The Amours of Philander and Silvia'' (1687). The copyright holder was Joseph Hindmarsh, later joined by Jacob Tonson.

Attribution Questions
Love-Letters was never published under Aphra Behn's name in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. The primary reason the novels are ascribed to Behn is because of Gerald Langbaine, who in 1691 published Account of the English Dramatick Poets that named Behn as the author. Another reason for the attribution is that the second volume has a title page that read "Printed for A.B." Both prefaces of the second and third volumes are signed "A.B." Other evidence includes: "the fact that Behn was having money difficulties and was having trouble selling her plays by the mid-1680s, as evidenced from her letter borrowing money from [Jacob] Tonson, and that her previous plays and poems indicate that she might have the literary skill to execute Love-Letters."

However, the evidence is only circumstantial. Anonymous publication was very common, and Behn usually did not publish anonymously (The Rover is an exception). Nor can the initials on the book be concretely attributed to "Aphra Behn." Janet Todd explains that, similarly to using anonymous, "A. B. is precisely what anyone might call him or herself when not wanting to be recognized or when insisting on standing for a group or for everyone." In addition, Behn's canon is notoriously hard to pin down, and there are many other works that have been attributed to her incorrectly. Despite this, the attribution is commonly given to Behn without scrutiny. Leah Orr concludes that there is no evidence that Behn did not write Love-Letters, but this alone does not mean that we should argue that she did.