Description

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623-73) was an English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and dramatist. She was an attendant to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, and travelled with her into exile in France, living for a time at the court of the young Louis XIV. In 1665 she became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, when he was a marquess and despite the efforts of a physician to help her conceive she had no children. She published under her own name at a time when most women published anonymously and her writing addressed a number of topics including gender, power, manners, scientific method and philosophy. Her utopian romance The Blazing World (1666) is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Published in 1668, this work is divided into thirteen parts, with an Appendix containing five parts, and is the second edition, much altered from the first which was named Philosophical and Physical Opinions.