About this item
A biography of the remarkable, and in her time scandalous, seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.'My ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world' - Margaret CavendishMargaret 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 much older partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that would remain at the heart of both her life and career.Cavendish 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.
About the Author
Francesca Peacock is an author and arts journalist. She writes art criticism, book reviews, and features for The Telegraph, The Times, The FT, The Mail on Sunday, Literary Review, The Spectator World, Poetry London, and a host of other publications. Francesca has appeared on BBC Radio 4's Front Row to discuss her journalism. Francesca read English at Oxford, where she fell in love with early modern women's writing through the rather incongruous medium of gardening pamphlets.
