Olejar Books

Aphra Behn The Feigned Courtesans (1679), Ariadne' She Ventures and He Wins (1695), Mary Piz
The Beau Defeated (1700), Susanna Centlivre The Basset Table (1705), The Busybody (1709).

Riotous Restoration comedy

Aphra Behn was the first woman to earn her living by writing for the theatre, and was ranked by Defoe alongside Rochester and Milton as one of the 'great wits' of her century. Mary Pix and the anonymous *Ariadne emerged in the mid-1690s, writing for a breakaway theatre company managed by a group of leading actors. Susanna Centlivre anticipated the changing taste of a new age, writing plays that were to continue to be performed by Garrick and other stars of the eighteenth-century theatre. This volume provides a rare opportunity to sample the wealth of talent and powerful sense of theatre embodied in these women's hitherto neglected plays.