Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
At this point the child Ottoline Bentinck moved with her immediate family from East Court in Berkshire, a country house without claims to unusual historical or aesthetic interest, to Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire...
Reception
Mary Oxlie
This work listed MO
as one of its Women among the moderns eminent for poetry. Phillips, nephew and pupil of John Milton
, seems quite interested in the existence of women poets. Others in his...
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...
Publishing
Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland
The full title was The Reply of the Most Illustrious Cardinall of Perron, to the Answeare of the Most Excellent King of Great Britaine: Perron had published in 1620 his riposte to a letter...
Author summary
Susan Du Verger
SDV
published between 1639 and 1653 two translations of fiction (the first a collection of early novels or romances) and an unusual critique of a work by Margaret Cavendish, then Marchioness of Newcastle
.
Literary...
politics
Dorothy Osborne
Like all her family, DO
was a supporter of the Stuart monarchy. As a young woman under the Commonwealth, visiting to the Isle of Wight, she saved one of her brothers from serious trouble...
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...
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...
Leisure and Society
Lady Ottoline Morrell
Her salon began with entertainments for her husband's political colleagues, but she expanded it to include a remarkable range of guests, especially writers, painters, poets, dancers, and critics. Her at homes on Thursday evenings soon...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jean Plaidy
Lucy Worsley
, Chief Curator of Historical Royal Palaces, said in 2010 that her career path had been set by reading The Young Elizabeth (with a picture of Hampton Court on its cover) when she...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lady Mary Wroth
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
, knew of Denny's attack: she quoted its last couplet in her Sociable Letters.
Roberts, Josephine A., and Lady Mary Wroth. “Introduction and Notes”. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, Louisiana State University Press, pp. 3 - 75, 219.
34
Intertextuality and Influence
Lucy Hutchinson
LH
wrote so that her children might learn about their father's life; she was also mindful of her husband's dying injunction to her to shew her selfe in this occasion a good christian, and above...
