Margaret Cavendish

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Standard Name: Cavendish, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Lucas
Married Name: Margaret Cavendish
Titled: Margaret Cavendish, Marchioness of Newcastle
Titled: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
Used Form: The Lady M. of Newcastle
Used Form: The Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
Used Form: The Lady Margaret Countesse of Newcastle
Used Form: The Lady Newcastle
Margaret Cavendish, who was by marriage a great lady, wrote in the seventeenth century primarily to please herself and her husband, who was an enthusiast for her writing; they took pleasure in her publishing as well as her writing. Her works (scientific speculations, poems, plays, speeches, biography and autobiography) were issued in handsome folio volumes, with her name and some honorific description, primarily for presentation more than for sale. Two women printers published works by her.
Bell, Maureen. A Dictionary of Women in the London Book Trade, 1540-1730. Loughborough University of Technology.
Oval miniature portrait of Margaret Cavendish, head and shoulders, in a gold frame. She wears a dark blue gown with pearl necklace and earrings. Her dark, curly hair is mostly loose.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Naomi Alderman
NA writes frequently in the Guardian. For instance, in an article on the televising of Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid's Tale she provides a sketch of utopian and dystopian fiction by women, from Margaret Cavendish
Family and Intimate relationships Penelope Aubin
PA 's maternal grandfather was the writer and scientist Walter Charleton , personal physician to Margaret Cavendish .
Welham, Debbie. “Library and Early Women’s Writing. Women Writers. Penelope Aubin (1679 –1738)”. Chawton House Library.
Family and Intimate relationships W. H. Auden
Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University formerly maintained on his website at http://www.stanford.edu/~njenkins/ a section called W. H. Auden. Family Ghosts, designed to show how Auden's family, despite his claims to ordinariness, sprang from a...
Textual Features Anna Letitia Barbauld
These are not narratives, but more like dramatised scenes from a child's daily life, with emphasis on food, play, and other pleasures. The vocabulary is limited, inessentials pared away, and the short sentences, often in...
Textual Production Aphra Behn
The essay is reprinted by Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson , editors of Margaret Cavendish , among contextual material relevant to Cavendish's interests, as a woman's promotion of women's right of access to the new science.
Cavendish, Margaret. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader. Editors Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview.
314-27
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Textual Features Frances Boothby
FB uses both prose and blank verse (not especially skilful), with couplets for high points. The stage management can appear clumsy, with a touch of the wilful point-making that distinguishes Margaret Cavendish 's theatre for...
Literary responses Anne Bradstreet
This book appeared in a publisher's catalogue of 1657 listing the most marketable books in England. (The list included all the great male names, from Shakespeare and Donne to Crashaw and Vaughan , but only...
Reception Brilliana, Lady Harley
After having been long admired for their picture of female heroism in time of need, BLH 's letters are now coming under scrutiny as expressions of domestic Puritan ideology and of the involvement of private...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Jane Cavendish
Lady Jane's father, William Cavendish (later Duke of Newcastle) , was a grandson of Bess of Hardwick , and was from his youth a courtier and a horseman of exceptional skill.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Cavendish
He...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Jane Cavendish
Lady Jane's father's second wife, Margaret Cavendish , was by several years the younger of the two, and at first Jane may have seen or heard of the woman who became her stepmother as shy...
Textual Features Lady Jane Cavendish
A specific crux in criticism of The Concealed Fansyes has been the question of whether Lady Tranquillity is a portrait of Margaret Cavendish . This question is bound up with that of date: William Cavendish...
Literary responses Lady Jane Cavendish
Thomas Lawrence , in his elegy, aspires to inherit LJC 's poetic gift, by seizing her discarded mantle (as Elisha in the Bible did the prophet's mantle of Elijah). In view of recent critical debate...
Textual Features Dinah Mulock Craik
Despite her regular invocation of conventional gender roles, DMC , like Felicia Hemans before her, considers alternative views of heroic male effort in poems such as her later The Arctic Exploration: from the Woman's Side...
Textual Production Susan Du Verger
Two years after Margaret Cavendish published The World's Olio, translator SDV issued a critique: Du Vergers Humble Reflections upon some Passages of the Right Honorable the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

Timeline

July 1634: William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle,...

Writing climate item

July 1634

William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle , gave a masque at one of his Nottinghamshire estates for Queen Henrietta Maria : Love's Welcome at Bolsover.

8 July 1644: William Cavendish (then Marquess of Newcastle,...

National or international item

8 July 1644

William Cavendish (then Marquess of Newcastle , later husband of Margaret Cavendish ), commander-in-chief of royalist forces in England, landed in Hamburg in Germany.

June 1648: Royalists commanded by Sir Charles Lucas...

National or international item

June 1648

Royalists commanded by Sir Charles Lucas were besieged in Colchester by parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax .

1665: Robert Hooke offered in Micrographia, as...

Writing climate item

1665

Robert Hooke offered in Micrographia, as its title explains, both physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses and also observations and inquiries, that is, scientific speculations and hypotheses.

30 August 1667: Anne Maxwell of Thames Street in London (a...

Building item

30 August 1667

Anne Maxwell of Thames Street in London (a master printer with about a hundred imprints between 1660 and 1684) entered as hers in the Stationers' RegisterThe life and death of Mother Shipton (a folk...

1697: John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A...

Women writers item

1697

John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Ancient and Modern a list of women famed for writing: Margaret Cavendish , Katherine Philips , Aphra Behn , Bathsua Makin , and Mary Astell .

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.

1864: Famous Girls who have become Illustrious...

Writing climate item

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.

Texts

Cavendish, Margaret. CCXI Sociable Letters. William Wilson, 1664.
Cavendish, Margaret. “Editor’s Preface”. The Life of William Cavendish, edited by Charles Harding Firth, Second Edition, Revised, George Routledge and Sons, 1906.
Cavendish, Margaret. Grounds of Natural Philosophy. A. Maxwell, 1668.
Cavendish, Margaret. “Introduction”. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, edited by Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-37.
Cavendish, Margaret. Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1656.
Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. A. Maxwell, 1666.
Cavendish, Margaret. Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places. 1662.
Cavendish, Margaret. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader. Editors Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview, 2000.
Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophical Letters. 1664.
Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophicall Fancies. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653.
Cavendish, Margaret. Playes. John Martyn, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, 1662.
Cavendish, Margaret. Plays Never before Printed. A. Maxwell, 1668.
Cavendish, Margaret. Poems and Fancies. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Life of . . . William Cavendishe, Duke . . . of Newcastle . . . A. Maxwell, 1667.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. Editor Firth, Charles Harding, George Routledge and Sons, 1906.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Philosophical and Physical Opinions. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655.
Cavendish, Margaret. The World’s Olio. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655.