Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister

Philander calls her sister and signs himself her brother, and the entire seduction runs on making that word unbearable and irresistible at once. Aphra Behn took the story from a scandal all London had followed, a Whig lord who ran off with his wife's young sister and was tried for it, then did what no English writer had sustained so long: she gave it entirely to the letters, so a reader sits inside the seduction instead of hearing about it, watching Silvia argue herself out of every scruple in pages she believes one man alone will read.