Pure wit : the revolutionary life of Margaret Cavendish

Title:

Author:

Summary:

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to an aristocratic family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford. With the rest of the court she went into self-imposed exile in France. Her family's wealth and lands were forfeited by Parliament. It was in France that she met her partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that made her the Duchess of Newcastle and would remain at the heart of both her life and career. Margaret was a passionate writer. She wrote extensively on gender, science, philosophy, and published under her own name at a time when women simply did not do so. Her greatest work was The Blazing World, published in 1666, a utopian proto-novel that is thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction that brought together Margaret's talents in poetry, philosophy, and science. Yet hers is a legacy that has long divided opinion, and history has largely forgotten her, an undeserved fate for a brilliant, courageous proto-feminist. In Pure Wit, Francesca Peacock remedies this omission and shines a spotlight on the fascinating, pioneering, yet often complex and controversial life, of the multi-faceted Margaret Cavendish. -- Amazon.

Edition:

First Pegasus Books cloth edition.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 360 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

Genre:

Biographies.

Personal Subject:

Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of, 1624?-1674.

Subject Term:

Women authors, English -- 17th century -- Biography.

Authors, English -- 17th century -- Biography.

Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography.

Publisher:

Pegasus Books,

Publication Date:

2024

ISBN:

9781639366033

Publication Information:

New York : Pegasus Books, 2024.

Call Number:

928 CAVENDISH

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003696971	New Adult Nonfiction	928 CAVENDISH	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

A biography of the remarkable--and in her time scandalous--seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, who pioneered the science fiction novel.

"My ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world."--Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to an aristocratic family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford. With the rest of the court she went into self-imposed exile in France. Her family's wealth and lands were forfeited by Parliament. It was in France that she met her partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that made her the Duchess of Newcastle and would remain at the heart of both her life and career.

Margaret was a passionate writer. She wrote extensively on gender, science, philosophy, and published under her own name at a time when women simply did not do so. Her greatest work was The Blazing World, published in 1666, a utopian proto-novel that is thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction that brought together Margaret's talents in poetry, philosophy, and science.

Yet hers is a legacy that has long divided opinion, and history has largely forgotten her, an undeserved fate for a brilliant, courageous proto-feminist. In Pure Wit , Francesca Peacock remedies this omission and shines a spotlight on the fascinating, pioneering, yet often complex and controversial life, of the multi-faceted Margaret Cavendish.

Author Notes

Francesca Peacock is an author and arts journalist from London. She writes about books, art, and culture for The Telegraph, The Times, The Spectator, and Prospect , amongst other publications. Pure Wit is her first book.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Peacock debuts with an excellent biography of 17th-century English author and "proto-feminist" Margaret Cavendish (née Lucas). Born in 1623, Margaret grew up in a wealthy family whose Royalist sympathies during the English Civil War inspired her at age 20 to join Queen Henrietta Maria's court as a lady-in-waiting. She fled with the queen to France in 1644, where she married William Cavendish, a disgraced Royalist general who retreated to France after a humiliating defeat on the battlefield, and later returned with him to England after Charles II's restoration in 1660. Highlighting the trailblazing fiction, poetry, and philosophical and scientific treatises Cavendish wrote before her sudden death in 1673, Peacock credits her 1666 novel, The Blazing World, in which a young woman becomes empress of an alternate realm, as "one of the earliest works of science fiction." Peacock captures Cavendish's larger-than-life persona (an amusing scene recounts when Cavendish, accepting the Royal Society's reluctant invitation for her to become the first woman to visit their headquarters, arrived in a "decadent dress... followed by her troupe of attendant ladies as crowds clamoured to see her") and perceptively teases out her contradictions, noting that despite Cavendish's "belief that marriage was an oppressive form of bondage," she lacked "interest in the existence of people who were kept in true slavery." It's a nuanced look at the life of a complicated female trailblazer. (Jan.)

Author's note	xi
Introduction: The empress and authoress of a whole world	xiii
1 The monstrous regiment of women	1
2 This unnatural war came like a whirlwind	15
3 Generalissimas and she-soldiers	33
4 On sorrow's billows this ship was tossed	56
5 It is hard to get children with good courage	71
6 A sumptuous banquet for the brain	89
7 The first English poet of your sex	107
8 We women are miserable	134
9 I have been asleep sixteen years	156
10 Women's kisses are unnatural	171
11 The thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent Princess of Philosophy	195
12 The Duchess of Newcastle is all the subject now discoursed on	220
13 What will survive of us is books	247
14 Doubt of an after being	269
Appendix 1 Works	288
Appendix 2 Other abbreviated works	290
Appendix 3 Abbreviations	292
Bibliography	293
Notes	312
Image credits	342
Acknowledgements	344
Index	346

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Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Table of Contents