Margaret Cavendish

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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, 1983.
Oval miniature portrait of Margaret Cavendish, head and shoulders, in a gold frame. She wears a dark blue gown with pearl necklace and earrings. Her dark, curly hair is mostly loose.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Sarah Lady Cowper
Nothing is known of SLC 's education, but it must have been both religious and relatively advanced, to account for her wide and intellectually intense reading as an adult in history, philosophy, and theology.
Kugler, Anne. Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of Lady Sarah Cowper, 1644-1720. Stanford University Press, 2002.
105
Family and Intimate relationships Penelope Aubin
PA 's maternal grandfather was the writer and scientist Walter Charleton , personal physician to Margaret Cavendish .
Welham, Debbie. “Library and Early Women’s Writing. Women Writers. Penelope Aubin (1679 –1738)”. Chawton House Library, Jan. 2011.
Family and Intimate relationships W. H. Auden
Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University formerly maintained on his website at http://www.stanford.edu/~njenkins/ a section called W. H. Auden. Family Ghosts, designed to show how Auden's family, despite his claims to ordinariness, sprang from a...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM was always especially proud of the fact that the Bentincks were descended, though not actually from the seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish , Duchess of Newcastle (who had no children), at least from the family...
Family and Intimate relationships Antonia Fraser
All three generations of women are seen combining in the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, given in affectionate memory of the grandmother, and awarded in 2004 by judges Antonia and Flora Fraser (mother and...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton Countess of Bridgewater
Elizabeth Cavendish's father, William Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield (later Duke of Newcastle) , was a grandson of the almost legendary Bess of Hardwick . He is remembered as a horsemaster, a patron of literature and the...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton Countess of Bridgewater
Their stepmother from 1645 was Margaret Cavendish . She is now famous for her unusual range of knowledge and for her writings, which unlike the other women of the family she published. But when she...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton Countess of Bridgewater
The only surviving daughter of ECECB , Elizabeth (later Elizabeth Sidney, Countess of Leicester ), followed in the footsteps of her mother, and of her aunt and godmother Lady Jane Cavendish , in leaving a...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Jane Cavendish
Lady Jane's father, William Cavendish (later Duke of Newcastle) , was a grandson of Bess of Hardwick , and was from his youth a courtier and a horseman of exceptional skill.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Cavendish
He...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Jane Cavendish
Lady Jane's father's second wife, Margaret Cavendish , was by several years the younger of the two, and at first Jane may have seen or heard of the woman who became her stepmother as shy...
Friends, Associates Anne Finch
AF enjoyed personal friendships with a number of distinguished men, among them Bishop Thomas Ken . She valued female friendship very highly; women friends figure prominently in her poetry. Lady Catherine Jones , to whom...
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...
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, 1983, pp. 3 - 75, 219.
34
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...
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...

Timeline

July 1634: William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle,...

Writing climate item

July 1634

William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle , gave a masque at one of his Nottinghamshire estates for Queen Henrietta Maria : Love's Welcome at Bolsover.
Cavendish, Margaret. “Introduction”. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, edited by Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-37.
18n3

8 July 1644: William Cavendish (then Marquess of Newcastle,...

National or international item

8 July 1644

William Cavendish (then Marquess of Newcastle , later husband of Margaret Cavendish ), commander-in-chief of royalist forces in England, landed in Hamburg in Germany.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Father of two women writers, he was shortly to marry a third.

June 1648: Royalists commanded by Sir Charles Lucas...

National or international item

June 1648

Royalists commanded by Sir Charles Lucas were besieged in Colchester by parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax .
Purkiss, Diane. The English Civil War, A People’s History. Harper Perennial, 2007.
535-6, 541-2
Sir Thomas Fairfax had recently acquired the title of third Lord Fairfax of Cameron .

1665: Robert Hooke offered in Micrographia, as...

Writing climate item

1665

Robert Hooke offered in Micrographia, as its title explains, both physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses and also observations and inquiries, that is, scientific speculations and hypotheses.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

30 August 1667: Anne Maxwell of Thames Street in London (a...

Building item

30 August 1667

Anne Maxwell of Thames Street in London (a master printer with about a hundred imprints between 1660 and 1684) entered as hers in the Stationers' RegisterThe life and death of Mother Shipton (a folk...

1697: John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A...

Women writers item

1697

John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Ancient and Modern a list of women famed for writing: Margaret Cavendish , Katherine Philips , Aphra Behn , Bathsua Makin , and Mary Astell .
Evelyn, John. Numismata. Benjamin Tooke, 1697.
265

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
12: 512
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
86-7
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
286-7

1864: Famous Girls who have become Illustrious...

Writing climate item

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

Texts

Cavendish, Margaret. CCXI Sociable Letters. William Wilson, 1664.
Cavendish, Margaret. “Editor’s Preface”. The Life of William Cavendish, edited by Charles Harding Firth, Second Edition, Revised, George Routledge and Sons, 1906.
Cavendish, Margaret. Grounds of Natural Philosophy. Second, A. Maxwell, 1668.
Cavendish, Margaret. “Introduction”. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, edited by Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-37.
Cavendish, Margaret. Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1656.
Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. A. Maxwell, 1666.
Cavendish, Margaret. Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places. 1662.
Cavendish, Margaret. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader. Editors Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Heller Mendelson, Broadview, 2000.
Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophical and Physical Opinions. Second, William Wilson, 1663.
Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophical Letters. 1664.
Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophicall Fancies. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653.
Cavendish, Margaret. Playes. John Martyn, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, 1662.
Cavendish, Margaret. Plays Never before Printed. A. Maxwell, 1668.
Cavendish, Margaret. Poems and Fancies. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653.
Cavendish, Margaret. Poems and Fancies. Second, William Wilson, 1664.
Cavendish, Margaret. Poems and Fancies. Third, A. Maxwell, 1668.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Life of . . . William Cavendishe, Duke . . . of Newcastle . . . A. Maxwell, 1667.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. Editor Firth, Charles Harding, Second edition, revised, George Routledge and Sons, 1906.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Philosophical and Physical Opinions. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655.
Cavendish, Margaret. The World’s Olio. J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655.
Cavendish, Margaret. The World’s Olio. Second, A. Maxwell, 1671.