Flowers for Aphra Behn: The First Woman of Letters and Garden Retreats

April 16, 1689

On this day, the incomparable Aphra Behn—a woman as bold as a trumpet vine climbing toward sunlight—was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey.

Imagine it: a woman who dared to live by her pen when pens were meant for men, now resting among poets and kings.

She is best remembered as the first professional woman playwright in Britain and as the author of Oroonoko, a novel that helped shape the very roots of English fiction.

'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' wrote Virginia Woolf, and surely every gardener of words and blossoms should heed that summons.

Let us imagine the tomb gently carpeted in petals—damask roses, perhaps, or sprigs of lavender—tokens left by the grateful hands of women who speak freely today.

Aphra’s courage planted something more enduring than a flowering vine: she sowed the seeds of independence.

Her life reminds us that to write, to create, to tend a garden or a sentence, both require the same delicious audacity—to begin, despite the odds. A garden, much like a woman’s voice, needs its own ground, sunlight, and the freedom to grow wild.

Aphra wrote,

That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.

How sweetly her words fall upon the gardener’s ear!

For what is a good retreat if not a sheltered arbor, a faithful friend if not a climbing rose, and a good library if not the very soil from which thoughts bloom?

She reminds us that tranquility, like a garden in spring, must be cultivated—a balance of stillness and vigor, solitude and fragrant company.

So let us toss a handful of petals upon Aphra’s memory this day.

May her words continue to rise like lilacs after rain, heady with courage and utterly alive.