Margaret Cavendish

12 Nov, 2026 820 English and Old English literatures

Margaret Cavendish was a prominent seventeenth century thinker and author, as well as the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society. Cavendish was born into the aristocracy before the Civil War, and spent many of her early years in exile in Paris. Whilst there she married William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and through him she mixed in the same circles as the likes of Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes. Throughout her life Cavendish would publish widely in natural philosophy, poetry, drama and more. One of her most renowned works if ‘The Blazing World’, a fantastical text which imagines a parallel world accessed through the North Pole, inhabited by talking animals. The work is considered one of the earliest examples of science fiction by many today. The protagonist of Cavendish’s novel is a woman similar to herself, and many of her works considered the female experience. Despite having a lesser impact following her death, more recent scholarship has reassessed Cavendish’s legacy and the radical nature of her ideas.

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Guests

  • Francesca Peacock No other episodes
    Writer and author of 'Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish'
  • Emma Rees No other episodes
    Professor of English Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Chester
  • Daniel Whiting No other episodes
    Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton

Reading list

  • The Blazing World and Other Writings
    Margaret Cavendish (ed. Kate Lilley) (Penguin, 1994) Google Books →
  • Bell in Campo & The Sociable Companions
    Margaret Cavendish (ed. Alexandra G. Bennett) (Broadview Editions, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays
    Margaret Cavendish (ed. Anne Shaver) (John Hopkins University Press, 1999) Google Books →
  • Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673
    Douglas Grant (University of Toronto Press, 1957) Google Books →
  • Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish
    Francesca Peacock (Head of Zeus, 2023) Google Books →
  • Margaret Cavendish: gender, genre, exile
    Emma L. E. Rees (Manchester University Press, 2015)

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Programme ID: m003417m

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m003417m

Auto-category: 820.92 (English literature—Biography)