In the 1670s, London audiences packed theaters to see plays by Aphra Behn. Her comedies were just as popular as those written by the most famous male playwrights of her time. But Aphra Behn was different. She was a woman, and she earned her living entirely from writing. That was almost unheard of. When Behn died on April 16, 1689, she was buried in the famous Westminster Abbey, near kings and queens. But over the next two centuries, people tried to erase her from history. Critics called her work improper because she was a woman writing about love and politics. Her plays slowly disappeared from the stage. Schools did not teach her books. It was as if she had never existed. Then in the 1900s, scholars started reading her work again. They realized how important she was. The writer Virginia Woolf once said that all women who write owe a debt to Aphra Behn. Behn had proven that a woman could support herself through writing alone. She opened a door that would never fully close again.