author
Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle
d. 1674
A fearless 17th-century writer who published under her own name, she moved easily between poetry, plays, philosophy, and some of the earliest works now called science fiction. Her books are lively, curious, and often strikingly 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 in the early 1620s, she later became Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She lived through the upheavals of the English Civil War, spent time in exile with the royalist court, and married William Cavendish, who supported her writing. At a time when women were often excluded from formal intellectual life, she chose to publish boldly under her own name.
Cavendish wrote across an unusually wide range of genres: poetry, plays, letters, biography, natural philosophy, and fiction. She is especially remembered for her energetic, speculative mind and for The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, a remarkable 1666 work often described as an early form of science fiction. Her philosophical writing also engaged directly with major scientific debates of her day.
She became famous in her own lifetime for both her talent and her independence. In 1667, she visited the Royal Society, a rare event for a woman of her era, and her work continues to interest readers for its imagination, wit, and determination to claim a public voice.