Margaret Cavendish

-
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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Lady Hester Pulter
As science, religion, and mythology meet in these poems, so do the public-political and the personal. Elegies lament both the violent deaths of royalist leaders Sir Charles Lucas (elder brother of the poet Margaret Cavendish
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Lady Mary Walker
The title character, Eliza de Crui, sets the tone for discussion by writing from Brussels to Mrs Pierpont at Liège with the remark that, since it is so hard to say anything new, she will...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Carola Oman
Of the various writing women connected with Henrietta Maria, CO mentions Margaret Cavendish as a serious-minded girl of literary aspirations,
Oman, Carola. Henrietta Maria. Hodder and Stoughton.
152
and Ann, Lady Fanshawe , merely as an awed reporter of the good looks...
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
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/.
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 Production Virginia Woolf
By 1912 VW had published on Margaret Cavendish (as Duchess of Newcastle), Ann, Lady Fanshawe , Elizabeth Carter , Anna Seward , Elizabeth, Lady Holland , Maria Edgeworth , Lady Hester Stanhope , theBrontë
Textual Production Susanna Wright
Another of her longer poems, The Grove, is a politically complex, proto-environmentalist statement about the destruction of forest. This fits into a mini-tradition of women's poetry about the cutting down of trees, a topic...
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 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 Features Susan Du Verger
An epistle dedicatory to Cavendish explains that the writer just happened upon a copy of this delicious and exquisite book
Du Verger, Susan. Du Vergers Humble Reflections.
prelims
and devoured it (continuing Cavendish's own metaphor) with the utmost delight, particularly because it...
Textual Features Madeleine de Scudéry
This work makes the association between women's agency and their public utterance, which was continued by Margaret Cavendish in her Female Orations (in Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places, 1662).
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...

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.