A writer of fiction of much greater importance appeared in the person of Aphra Johnson, more generally known as Mrs. Behn, or "the divine Astraea"; "a gentlewoman by birth, of a good family in the city of Canterbury." Her father was appointed to a colonial office in the West Indies, where he took his family while Mrs. Behn was yet a young girl. There the future authoress began a chequered life by living on a plantation among rough and lawless colonists, and there she made the acquaintance of the slave Oroonoko, whose sad story she afterward made known to the world. On her return to England, she married Behn, a merchant of Dutch extraction, and went to live in the Netherlands, where she acted as a British spy. By working upon the feelings of her lovers, she was able to convey information to the English government of the intention of the Dutch to enter the Thames to destroy the English fleet. Her warnings were disregarded, and giving up her patriotic occupation, she returned to London, and devoted herself to literature. She died in 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey:--"Covered only with a marble stone, with two wretched verses on it." Although Mrs. Behn is now almost forgotten, her position in her own time was not inconsiderable. Besides a number of letters and poems, her literary productions include a translation of Fontenelle's "Plurality of Worlds," and a paraphrase on Van Dale's "De Oraculis Ethnicorum." Her plays met with some success, but were characterized by a licentiousness which won for her the title of "the female Wycherley," a fact, which, on account of her sex, called down upon her a general and well-deserved condemnation. Two other productions, of which the nature is sufficiently indicated by their titles, were "The Lover's Watch; or the Art of making Love: being Rules for Courtship for every Hour of the Day and Night"; and "The Ladies Looking Glass to dress themselves by; or the whole Art of charming all Mankind."