Margaret Cavendish

by

James B. Fitzmaurice

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 September 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0535

Introduction

Margaret Cavendish was the first woman to publish a great deal in English, and she did so under her own name. Her writing includes poetry, fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, essays, fictional letters, and philosophy (especially philosophy of science). Although it is not widely known these days, she was treated with respect by many intellectuals of her time. Her life writing was read and probably imitated by other women such as Lucy Hutchinson. Hutchinson’s biography of her husband, Colonel Hutchinson, shows signs of influence from Cavendish’s earlier and similar biography. Nevertheless, Cavendish was, until the mid-1980s, taken to be of marginal importance as a writer and thinker. Her unusual dress, her work on difficult philosophical topics, and her choosing to have her writing published caused her to be widely regarded as eccentric. Dorothy Osborne (Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, cited under Reception History (Primary Materials)) suggested in a letter to William Temple that Cavendish belonged in Bedlam, but Osborne found Cavendish amusing rather than dangerous or threatening. Samuel Pepys (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, cited under Reception History (Primary Materials)) did feel threatened and believed that Cavendish’s husband should assert control over her writing. Horace Walpole (A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland; with Lists of Their Work, cited under Reception History (Primary Materials)) ridiculed Cavendish (while possibly borrowing from her for his play The Mysterious Mother). Charles Lamb Essays of Elia, cited under Reception History (Primary Materials)) found her delightfully odd. Virginia Woolf’s acerbic remarks about Cavendish in The Common Reader (1925) and Room of One’s Own (1929) have been much quoted, but probably hide a sympathy felt by Woolf for a woman whom she believed to be another shy writer. The word “coarse” often appears in 19th-century printed sources in connection with Cavendish, though it is never explained or contextualized. The word is probably connected to low comedy found in her poems about Queen Mab and to Grammont’s 1713 story (The Memoirs of Count Grammont, cited under General Overview) of her as a woman with an eye for young men. Grammont’s view remains generally unnoticed in academe. In the 1980s, Cavendish’s reputation as an eccentric began to fade and her writing increasingly was taken seriously. Her work came to be the subject of scholarly articles, and much of what she wrote, especially Blazing World, was assigned in post-secondary classrooms. The focus in both teaching and research has been on the plays (which have received classroom performance), The Blazing World (as a utopia), and the philosophy (especially panpsychism and the poems about animals). During the 21st century, Cavendish has found her way into the mainstream of public intellectual discourse, as evidenced by Siri Hustvedt’s 2014 novel The Blazing World, cited under Creative Approaches to Cavendish including Modern Interpretations of Her Plays). Merve Emire’s New Yorker article (New Yorker, cited under Intellectual History), and a large number of websites and blogs run outside of academe.

General Overview

All of the published writings of Cavendish are available online through subscription from EEBO (Early English Books Online) TCP and WWO (Women Writers Online)—both cited under Facsimiles, Transcriptions, and Modern Editions of Early Printed Works—and UPenn Digital Library. Fortunately, many good editions are available free online from or by way of Digital Cavendish. Sizeable numbers of reliable paperback editions are suitable for classroom use. Katie Whitaker’s biography, (Mad Madge 2002), is standard. Cavendish has a long and substantial reception history, primary sources for which can be accessed through various databases. Many monographs about her or that contain chapters devoted to her have appeared in the last twenty-five years.

• Ballard, George. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain. Oxford: Hathi Trust, 1752.

  In this once-influential biographical entry on Cavendish, Ballard sought to establish her as a woman entirely devoted to her husband and given over to writing light and airy poetry. Ballard’s approach goes against the view found in Grammont.

• Bowerbank, Sylvia, and Sara Mendelson. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2000.

  In perhaps the most widely assigned paperback scholarly edition used in classrooms, Bowerbank and Mendelson helped to establish Blazing World, Convent of Pleasure, and a True Relation (the autobiography) as central texts.

• Broad, Jacqueline. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

  Against the view of Cavendish as an eccentric, Broad writes that Cavendish’s “thought can be seen as a rational contribution to the philosophical enterprise of her time.”

• Grammont, Philbert, count of. The Memoirs of Count Grammont. Project Gutenberg, 1713.

  Grammont’s Memoirs was first published in English by Abel Boyer in 1714. The English translation most reprinted is by Horace Walpole. Memoirs was well known from its earliest appearance and is the source of the story that suggests that Cavendish had an eye for younger men. Transcribed in French by Anthony Hamilton.

• James, Susan. Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

  Available in paperback and intended for scholars as well as undergraduates, James’s introduction is a reliable guide to the texts on politics and government.

• Lilley, Kate, ed. The Blazing World and Other Stories. London: Penguin, 1992.

  Kate Lilley’s reasonably priced paperback helped to launch Cavendish into the world of academe by way of the post-secondary classroom. The introduction is reliable and the three key texts highly influential: Blazing World, “The Contract,” and “Assaulted and Pursued Chastity.”

• O’Neill, Eileen, ed. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

  O’Neill’s edition established Observations as a central text on Cavendish’s scientific thought. O’Neill explains that Observations can be understood as “published notebooks” rather than the more usual treatise, a fact that helps to explain why the volume often was not taken seriously.

• Sarasohn, Lisa T. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

  DOI: 10.1353/book.465

  In this monograph, Sarasohn clearly and cogently argues for Cavendish as an original scientific thinker who was not terribly far from the mainstream of the 17th century.

• Siegfried, Brandie R., and Lisa T. Sarasohn, eds. God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2014.

  This collection of essays on Cavendish’s religion and natural philosophy edited by Siegfried and Sarasohn includes chapters on Cavendish and the Jews and on the Kabbalah.

• Whitaker, Katie. Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by the Pen. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

  The standard modern, scholarly biography by Whitaker. Full citations of print sources and manuscript archives. Excellent biographical connections to major contemporary social and intellectual figures as well as servants and others. Now available with a slightly different title and a publication date of 2011.