Behn, Aphra / 2008-06-02 00:00:00
1688
OROONOKO: OR, THE ROYAL SLAVE
by Mrs. Aphra Behn
OROONOKO: OR, THE ROYAL SLAVE
[1688]
I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave,
to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life
and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure; nor in
relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such
as arrived in earnest to him: and it shall come simply into the world,
recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there
being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting,
without the addition of invention.
I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find
here set down; and what I could not be witness of, I received from the
mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, who gave
us the whole transactions of his youth: and though I shall omit, for
brevity's sake, a thousand little accidents of his life, which,
however pleasant to us, where history was scarce and adventures very
rare, yet might prove tedious and heavy to my reader, in a world where
he finds diversions for every minute, new and strange. But we who were
perfectly charmed with the character of this great man were curious to
gather every circumstance of his life.
The scene of the last part of his adventures lies in a colony in
America, called Surinam, in the West Indies.
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