By Zac Sherratt, BBC News, South East • Caroline Wordsworth, BBC News, Kent
BBCAn extremely rare first edition copy of the 1688 novel Oroonoko by Aphra Behn has been found in Kent.
The life and works of Behn – credited as the world’s first professional woman writer – are currently being celebrated at an exhibition at her home town Canterbury’s Beaney House of Art & Knowledge.
Also from Canterbury, Anna Astin picked out a copy of Oroonoko from her father’s antique shop in the 1950s, which she brought to the exhibition and showed the staff there.
Elaine Hobby, professor of 17th-century studies at Loughborough University, said: “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me in my life – and I’ve not had a dull life.”
Oroonoko explores the sufferings of an enslaved African prince in the colonial-era Guianas.
The novel is taught in universities around the world and is thought to have inspired the abolitionist movement.
There were only 13 known first editions of Oroonoko, stored in the top libraries around the UK and US. Ms Astin’s, which has been kept on a bookshelf at her home, is now the 14th.
“I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that a book that was in my book case for all this time has now brought about so much interest,” she said.
Justin Croft, a historic book seller and specialist on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, called the discovery “tremendously exciting” and said it was “amazing” the book had survived.
Bibliographers will study each word and page to check for differences between the other 13 copies. Ms Astin’s copy is missing its title page.
“I’m going to decide what to do with it. It doesn’t need to go into a cupboard anymore,” she said. “It’s too important.”
