author
Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle
d. 1674
A fearless 17th-century writer who published under her own name when few women could, she moved easily between poetry, plays, philosophy, and early science fiction. Her work is bold, curious, and often wonderfully original.
3 Audiobooks
The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World
by Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle
Grounds of Natural Philosophy: Divided into Thirteen Parts The Second Edition, much altered from the First, which went under the Name of Philosophical and Physical Opinions
by Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle
Philosophical Letters: or, modest Reflections upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy
by Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle
About the author
Born Margaret Lucas around 1623, she became Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, after marrying William Cavendish. She lived through the upheavals of the English Civil War and spent part of her life in exile on the continent, experiences that shaped her writing and public identity.
She was one of the most prolific English women writers of the 17th century, publishing books of poetry, drama, philosophy, letters, and prose fiction under her own name. That was unusual for her time, and it helped make her a striking literary figure. Her best-known works include Poems, and Fancies, Philosophical Letters, and The Blazing World, a work often celebrated as an early example of science fiction.
Cavendish also wrote seriously about natural philosophy, arguing with major ideas of her age and taking part in intellectual debates usually dominated by men. Remembered for her imagination as much as her ambition, she remains a vivid example of a writer who refused to stay within the limits her era set for her.