Scholars also cannot determine with certainty whether the narrator of Oroonoko is intended to represent Aphra Behn and whether the narrative is intended to be telling the truth. In any case, Behn receives credit for influencing the development of the British novel at or near its origins. The honor often has gone to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) Defoe is often referred to as 'the father of the novel.' Other scholars insist that Oroonoko should have the honor in that it was written in a novelistic form and is not too short to be disqualified. Scholars have debated which work should count as the first novel in English.

It developed the figure of the noble savage that was later to be made famous by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

It also influenced the development of the English novel, developing the female narrative voice and treating anti-colonial and abolitionist themes. Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave remains important. She was, as Edmund Gosse remarked, 'the George Sand of the Restoration,' and she lived the Bohemian life in London in the seventeenth century as George Sand lived it in Paris in the nineteenth.Although it was not popular duing Behn's lifetime, today Oroonoko (1688) is Aphra Behn's most widely read and most highly regarded work. Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man.'. catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations. furiously resented.' She was, as Felix Shelling said, 'a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature. for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.' Vita Sackville-West called Behn 'an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them. Woolf wrote, 'All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn. In author Virginia Woolf's reckoning, Behn's total career is more important than any particular work it produced. Along with Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, she is sometimes referred to as part of 'The fair triumvirate of wit.' Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature. Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers.

Orinoco aphra behn