“She Was a Notorious”: Literary-Critical Reception of Aphra Behn in Russia, 1860s–1910s

This article examines the critical reception of the English writer Aphra Behn within the Russian literary criticism and scholarship of the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The study analyzes references to and assessments of Behn’s literary legacy found in a range of sources, including general literary histories, academic textbooks, dictionaries, and reference works. The primary materials under scrutiny include the publications of H. G. G. Hettner (1863), V. R. Zotov (1882), A. A. Chebyshev (1897) etc., as well as the articles of M. K. Tsebrikova (1871) etc. The findings demonstrate that the appraisal of Behn’s oeuvre in Russia during this period was largely derivative of Western European sources and was predominantly focused on specific aspects of her work. These include the perceived frivolity and “immorality” of many of her compositions; the anti-slavery message of her seminal work, the novel Oroonoko; her perception as a forerunner of Sentimentalism and a precursor to Rousseau’s idealization of the “noble savage”; and her contribution to the formation of women's literature, documentary prose, and the novel as a distinct literary form. A significant portion of the article is dedicated to a detailed analysis of M. K. Tsebrikova’s survey “English Women Novelists.” The content of this review provides compelling evidence that the critic was familiar either with the original English text of Oroonoko or its French translation. Furthermore, the article observes that Thomas Southerne’s tragedy Oroonoko, which is traditionally considered to be based on Behn’s earlier novel, is frequently mentioned in Russian sources from this period without any attribution to the English author.