Margaret Cavendish was one of the most original, lovable and eccentric of women writers. Pepys called her and “mad, ridiculous and conceited and ” but when she paid her famous visit to London in 1667 he ran all over the town to see her. And many of her other contemporaries were no less fascinated. Posterity has continued to feel the attraction, to her many admirers she has always been and “the incomparable Princess and “, and Lamb enthusiastically praised her as and “the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, – but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brain’d, generous Margaret Newcastle and “. This biography is the first full-length study entirely devoted to the Duchess of Newcastle. It shows Margaret’s metamorphosis from an imaginative, bashful child into a romantic public figure, and how, after living at home among a family unusual in its loyalties, she served as lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria during the Civil War, and in exile married William Cavendish, the and “Loyal and ” Duke of Newcastle, before emerging as the first woman writer of her times – and “Margaret the First and ” as she wished to be known.Her poetry, fiction, drama and natural philosophy, along with her many other writings, are treated as facets of her extraordinary personality; a personality delightful in itself and also valuable as an illustration of the spirit of the age. The illustrations are unusually good and include a fine unpublished portrait of the Duchess, a photograph of her effigy in Westminster Abbey and reproductions of several of the ornate engraved title-pages of her works,[Taken from dust-jacket.]

Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle 1623-1673 PDF

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