Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673)
Author of The Blazing World and Other Writings
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Image credit: Detail of the portrait by Peter Lely, in The Portland Collection, Harley Gallery, Welbeck Estate, Nottinghamshire
Works by Margaret Cavendish
Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance (Revels Plays Companions Library) (2006) — Author — 9 copies
The life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle : to which is added the true relation of my birth, breeding and life (2017) 6 copies
The Life of the Duke of Newcastle, A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and life, Sociable Letters (1915) 3 copies
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle : poems and fancies with the animal parliament (2018) 3 copies
Plays, never before printed 2 copies
Cavendish, Margaret Archive 1 copy
The worlds olio 1 copy
DIE GLEISSENDE WELT 1 copy
Associated Works
The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse & Prose (2000) — Contributor, some editions — 76 copies
A Book of 'Characters' from Theophrastus, Joseph Hall, Sir Thomas Overbury, Nicolas Breton, John Earle, Thomas Fuller, (1924) — Contributor — 4 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of
- Other names
- Marchioness of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Lucas, Margaret - Birthdate
- 1623
- Date of death
- 1673-12-15
- Gender
- female
- Education
- tutors
- Occupations
- poet
philosopher
essayist
playwright
autobiographer
maid of honor (show all 7)
biographer - Relationships
- Egerton, Elizabeth Cavendish (stepdaughter)
Cavendish, William (husband) - Short biography
- Margaret Cavendish, née Lucas, was born in Colchester, Essex, one of eight children of a minor landowner. The family's lives were upended in 1642 by violence at the start of the English Civil War. Margaret went to the court of King Charles I at Oxford as a maid-of-honor to Queen Henrietta Maria. When the Queen fled to France, Margaret went with her. There in 1645, she met and married the courtier and author William Cavendish, future 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The couple moved to Antwerp, where she began to write. Between 1654 and 1668, she published more than 14 books; they appeared under her own name at a time when most female writers could only publish anonymously. In addition to fiction and works of natural philosophy (science), she wrote one of the first biographies by a woman written in English. The duchess was widely derided with cruel nicknames, including Mad Madge.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Colchester, Essex, England
- Places of residence
- Colchester, Essex, England
Paris, France
Antwerp, Belgium - Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Burial location
- Westminster Abbey, London, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Members
Reviews
First I'll get out of the way the fact that, like later utopias such as Erewhon, Looking Backward, etc, this can at times turn into an unbearably tedious cross between fictional ethnography and political manifesto.
But that's not important because we all know how to skim. What is important is that this is a 17th century novel in which Our Heroine gets abducted but then her abductors die when their boat accidentally sails to another world that's attached to theirs at the North Pole. She show more survives and gets rescued and ends up marrying this new world's emperor, who apparently doesn't care much about ruling because he puts her in charge of this world full of fox-men and bird-men and fish-men and insect-men. And she changes things and then realises this breaks everything so changes things back, and then she starts chatting with spirits and ends up communicating soul-to-soul with the author in our world, so it's like two Mary Sues in one, plus playing with the fourth wall, it's fantastic.
(There are bits where the author's talking about how she's super ambitious and this way she gets to transcend all possible earthly glory by being the creator of an entire world, and I can't tell whether I want to hug her or nod and be all "So true.")
And then, and then! The Empress discovers that her country back in her own world is under threat from foreign kingdoms, so she and the author lead a fleet back there in her golden submarine (seriously I'm not making this up) and tell her king there "Yo, Majesty, I got this," and put the fear of hell into those foreign kingdoms, and then they do it again when some of said kingdoms are hesitant about paying tribute.
Seriously, 17th century girlpower for the win. show less
But that's not important because we all know how to skim. What is important is that this is a 17th century novel in which Our Heroine gets abducted but then her abductors die when their boat accidentally sails to another world that's attached to theirs at the North Pole. She show more survives and gets rescued and ends up marrying this new world's emperor, who apparently doesn't care much about ruling because he puts her in charge of this world full of fox-men and bird-men and fish-men and insect-men. And she changes things and then realises this breaks everything so changes things back, and then she starts chatting with spirits and ends up communicating soul-to-soul with the author in our world, so it's like two Mary Sues in one, plus playing with the fourth wall, it's fantastic.
(There are bits where the author's talking about how she's super ambitious and this way she gets to transcend all possible earthly glory by being the creator of an entire world, and I can't tell whether I want to hug her or nod and be all "So true.")
And then, and then! The Empress discovers that her country back in her own world is under threat from foreign kingdoms, so she and the author lead a fleet back there in her golden submarine (seriously I'm not making this up) and tell her king there "Yo, Majesty, I got this," and put the fear of hell into those foreign kingdoms, and then they do it again when some of said kingdoms are hesitant about paying tribute.
Seriously, 17th century girlpower for the win. show less
****.5
At first I thought it was a bland rip-off of Gulliver's Travels, but then I double checked the dates, and this book was written before Jonathan Swift was even born! In that context, it's amazingly prescient.
There's some delightful philosophical musing, and Cavendish was clearly well read and well informed on the latest scientific developments of the day.
Less successful for the modern reader are the sections on politics. While there are certainly some good points, and she clearly show more desired to create a utopian society with more prosperity and opportunities for everyone regardless of sex or skin colour, she adheres strongly to the aristocracy with a ruling monarch. Considering her own situation at the time this is perhaps easily forgiven, especially since such ideas are still popular among many people 350+ years later. The bigger problem is that the minutia of the English Civil War and subsequent Restoration are exceedingly boring to anyone without a strong interest in the history of the period, and reading about them veiled in the allegory of The Blazing World didn't make them any more appealing to me. show less
At first I thought it was a bland rip-off of Gulliver's Travels, but then I double checked the dates, and this book was written before Jonathan Swift was even born! In that context, it's amazingly prescient.
There's some delightful philosophical musing, and Cavendish was clearly well read and well informed on the latest scientific developments of the day.
Less successful for the modern reader are the sections on politics. While there are certainly some good points, and she clearly show more desired to create a utopian society with more prosperity and opportunities for everyone regardless of sex or skin colour, she adheres strongly to the aristocracy with a ruling monarch. Considering her own situation at the time this is perhaps easily forgiven, especially since such ideas are still popular among many people 350+ years later. The bigger problem is that the minutia of the English Civil War and subsequent Restoration are exceedingly boring to anyone without a strong interest in the history of the period, and reading about them veiled in the allegory of The Blazing World didn't make them any more appealing to me. show less
The Contract
This was ok, couple of points of interest, a pretty good bit of servant/master comedy and some meditations on why discretion is the better part of valour. [2/5]
Assaulted and Pursued Chastity
Again like the last tale really terrible love interest characters and that makes the female characters that love them look pretty bad too. However this tale is so random with some weird fantasy/lost world elements thrown in and wars and all sorts of stuff happening.
Its interesting how show more Cavendish makes her writings purely fictional, including separating them from the real world by replacing names and even religion. So the places are called things like Kingdom of Riches, Kingdom of Amour etc. and no one even when promoting christian-like beliefs ever refers to a God, but rather invokes Jupiter/Juno etc. [2.5/5]
The Blazing World
My second reading of this part, heres my initial review:
A weird bit of philosophy and proto-sci-fi. Ignores the rules of any conventional story, features parallel worlds, astral-projection,submarines made of gold and many sorts of animal men including Lice-men. Best approached as a piece of philosophy rather than sci-fi but quite interesting.
Most things still apply but was a lot drier than i remembered, but also more interesting in certain parts. An invasion that happens near the end which uses the things in spoilers above, those things were actually Plan B, Plan A was azombie army , crazy stuff.
Certain of the allegorical elements reminded me of parts of the [b:The Faerie Queene|765427|The Faerie Queene|Edmund Spenser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328308492l/765427._SY75_.jpg|19904], and [b:Lucian's True History|38592647|Lucian's True History|Lucian of Samosata|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518723013l/38592647._SY75_.jpg|3593172] gets referenced too which is quite appropriate. [3/5]
Overall you have to remember this was written in 1666, the times of shakespeare, spencer, cervantes etc. If this was composed during the 1860s it might be less weird... scratch that... it would be just as weird but a bit less interesting.
However for the 1600's these writings are truly unique oddities with their mix of metaphor, fantasy, science and philosophy. show less
This was ok, couple of points of interest, a pretty good bit of servant/master comedy and some meditations on why discretion is the better part of valour. [2/5]
Assaulted and Pursued Chastity
Again like the last tale really terrible love interest characters and that makes the female characters that love them look pretty bad too. However this tale is so random with some weird fantasy/lost world elements thrown in and wars and all sorts of stuff happening.
Its interesting how show more Cavendish makes her writings purely fictional, including separating them from the real world by replacing names and even religion. So the places are called things like Kingdom of Riches, Kingdom of Amour etc. and no one even when promoting christian-like beliefs ever refers to a God, but rather invokes Jupiter/Juno etc. [2.5/5]
The Blazing World
My second reading of this part, heres my initial review:
A weird bit of philosophy and proto-sci-fi. Ignores the rules of any conventional story, features parallel worlds, astral-projection,
Most things still apply but was a lot drier than i remembered, but also more interesting in certain parts. An invasion that happens near the end which uses the things in spoilers above, those things were actually Plan B, Plan A was a
Certain of the allegorical elements reminded me of parts of the [b:The Faerie Queene|765427|The Faerie Queene|Edmund Spenser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328308492l/765427._SY75_.jpg|19904], and [b:Lucian's True History|38592647|Lucian's True History|Lucian of Samosata|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518723013l/38592647._SY75_.jpg|3593172] gets referenced too which is quite appropriate. [3/5]
Overall you have to remember this was written in 1666, the times of shakespeare, spencer, cervantes etc. If this was composed during the 1860s it might be less weird... scratch that... it would be just as weird but a bit less interesting.
However for the 1600's these writings are truly unique oddities with their mix of metaphor, fantasy, science and philosophy. show less
this was definitely the most painful book to get through but now im salty that i actually kinda liked it. there was just enough homoeroticism, girlboss behaviour, and utter chaos to redeem it. (fellas is it gay if your soul leaves ur body to kiss and embrace ur bestie's soul while repeatedly declaring ur love for her?)
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Statistics
- Works
- 37
- Also by
- 16
- Members
- 1,196
- Popularity
- #21,486
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 19
- ISBNs
- 138
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- Favorited
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