Mrs. Behn, like Alexander Pope, has almost succeeded in leaving for posterity an embellished and retouched portrait of herself. In her works, especially in Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt, she inserted a number of passages purporting to be autobiographical. These autobiographical bits deal almost exclusively with a period twenty years previous to the publication of the novels in 1688, a period long before Mrs. Behn had attained any literary reputation, so that a little judicious alteration of the details of her life had every chance of passing unnoticed.