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Mad Madge: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Royalist, Writer and Romantic
Margaret Cavendish's life as a writer and noblewoman unfolded against the backdrop of the English Civil War and Restoration. Pursuing the only career open to women of her class, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Henrietta Maria. Exiled to Paris with the Queen, she met and married William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle. In exile, Margaret did something unthinkable for a seventeenth-century Englishwoman: she lived proudly as a writer. Eventually she published twenty-three volumes, starting with "Poems and Fancies," the first book of English poetry published by a woman under her own name. But later generations too easily accepted the disparaging opinions of her shocked critics, and labeled her "Mad Madge of Newcastle.""Mad Madge" is both a lively biography of a fascinating woman and a window on a tumultuous cultural time.
448 pages, Paperback
First published August 21, 2002
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533 people want to read
About the author
Katie Whitaker
3 books7 followersKatie Whitaker did a Ph. D in the History of Science at Cambridge, where she was awarded the Thirlwall Prize and Medal for the best original research by a young scholar under 30. She has also been a Century Fellow at the University of Chicago where she was awarded an MPhil. She lives in Yorkshire, England, with her husband and two children.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 18, 2010
Gets to a 3.5 for me. There's a lot of good information here about both Margaret and the English Civil War/Restoration period, which I found worthwhile. Margaret herself has been fairly recently 'reclaimed' as an early sf/f writer for her novel "Blazing World," but she was better know during her own time for her scientific and philosophical writing.
Whitaker does an admirable job and researching her life and I can honestly say I learned a great deal.
She does wax overenthusiastic about her subject, and by extension, anyone who liked her subject, so there are silly moments throughout the book. In one example, a Cromwellian commander turns down the change at single combat (in lieu of army against army) with Margaret's husband because, according to Whitaker, he was such an amazing fighter. Not because Cromwell's army was, I dunno, winning at the time? Right. Also the choice of either the writer or the publisher to claim that Margaret "was the first women to support herself by her pen" is mae rather improbable. In 300 plus pages of biography, Margaret pays printers, pays publishers, pays artists and pays booksellers. At no point does she ever actually collect money for her writing or at least not in such amounts that her biographer mentions it. The reason that Aphra Behn is generally accorded to be the first woman to live by her writing is that she actually had to support herself and began writing to stay out of debtor's prison.
But these quibbles aside, if you're interested in Margaret and her work, which was groundbreaking on many levels apart from the economic, it's worth checking out.
Whitaker does an admirable job and researching her life and I can honestly say I learned a great deal.
She does wax overenthusiastic about her subject, and by extension, anyone who liked her subject, so there are silly moments throughout the book. In one example, a Cromwellian commander turns down the change at single combat (in lieu of army against army) with Margaret's husband because, according to Whitaker, he was such an amazing fighter. Not because Cromwell's army was, I dunno, winning at the time? Right. Also the choice of either the writer or the publisher to claim that Margaret "was the first women to support herself by her pen" is mae rather improbable. In 300 plus pages of biography, Margaret pays printers, pays publishers, pays artists and pays booksellers. At no point does she ever actually collect money for her writing or at least not in such amounts that her biographer mentions it. The reason that Aphra Behn is generally accorded to be the first woman to live by her writing is that she actually had to support herself and began writing to stay out of debtor's prison.
But these quibbles aside, if you're interested in Margaret and her work, which was groundbreaking on many levels apart from the economic, it's worth checking out.
August 20, 2021
Her broad reach in literature, her love story with her husband, her witnessing history, her lack of education, her feminism, her achievements, her ecology; they all resonate through time. As with many looks into the past I have read this year, I am saddened that despite how far we have come, she is nearly lost to history and sometimes it feels as if there are galaxies more to run before equality is the life breath of the planet.
I read “The Description of a New World, called the Blazing-World” written in 1656 this year and it was a mad, kaleidoscopic fantasy/sci fi work and am fascinated by the author’s life and work. I did study some European History in high school, but dates had never solidified in my mind, and in my mind (kidding) they were still speaking Old English as far as I knew in the 1600s, so it was an eye opener to learn of her role and success. Some of the book spent so much time on the family finances and political intrigues hat were boring, but still a good book, and biographies are not my favorite genre.
Much of Margaret’s writing was influenced by the conversation and literary games of feminine salon culture, with its taste for wit and wordplay. Striking, far-fetch comparisons- as when she likened poetry and history to the dances of the France galliard and the Spanish pavan- were a prominent feature of the style, and many of the pieces she wrote consisted largely or wholly of extended similes. Her essay titled “Of Several Writings,” for instance, formed an elaborate analogy between literature and human society where different kinds of books were revealed a judges, lawyers… merchants, conjurers, cut-purses, bawds… In another salon tradition, Margaret created 55 short allegories. The mind is a garden, the world is a shop, the head is a parliament of thoughts or a wilderness of beast, thoughts are pancakes tossed in the pan of the brain, married life is a stew of troubles and vexations.
Walking in the fields and woods in the essay “A Dialogue of Birds,” Margaret wrote the tales of sparrow, magpie, finches, linnets, partridge, woodcock, quail, snipe, swallows and parrot as each told of mankind’s particular cruelties to their kind- hunting them with dogs and hawks, wasting their flesh in gluttonous feasting, caging them. Even for an orak tree- “king of all the wood,” cut down by his overambitious, ungrateful subjects, mankind- she was a forerunner of modern ecology. Margaret was setting herself against he entire Judeo-Christian tradition of man’s superiority over the natural world and his god-given right to use it as he wills. For all we knew, she argued in yet more poems, beast, bird, and fishes might have as much intelligence as us, or even more.
From 1600 to 1640, fewer than 80 books by women had been published in England (1/2 of 1% of all books printed) and many had appeared posthumously. In 1653 Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies was the first book of English poetry to be published by a woman under her own name. She “imagined I will be censured by my own sex; and men will cast a smile of scorn upon my book, because they think thereby women encroach too much upon their prerogatives; for they hold books as their crown…” She felt is was her moral duty to put her talents to use. “A smile of neglect cannot dishearten me, no more can a frown of dislike affright me…my mind’s too big.”
Cavendish became the most prolific and wide-ranging female author that the English language had ever seen. in a literary career of 20 years, she wrote 23 volumes; in an age of polymaths, when philosophers wrote poetry and playwrights studied the sciences, Cavendish ranged even more widely than most- 24 plays, a large collection of short fiction in prose and verse, realistic and fantastic, a book of orations, a volume of letters, of essays, an autobiography, and biography, 6 philosophical treatises, and a utopia.
In the late summer of 1656, Margaret published Nature’s Pictures with an autobiography at the end, and no woman had ever published- or probably ever written an autobiography like Margaret’s. Couched purely in secular terms, with none of the religious reflection that was a normal preoccupation of women who kept diaries or wrote accounts of their lives, it presented an unorthodox, individualist woman who was not afraid to admit to her unfeminine, perhaps even unchristian ambitions.
While other teenage girls talked about love and young men, Margaret “confess’d I only was in love with three dead men, which were dead long before my time, the one was Caesar for his valour, the second Ovid, for his wit, and the third was our countryman Shakespeare.” Margaret later became the first woman to write a critical appreciation of Shakespeare’s work.
“Shall only men sit in honour’s chair, and women stand as waiters by?...shall only men live by fame, and women die in oblivion?” demands Lady Victoria, the heroine of Margaret’s play Bell in Campo, who insists on joining her husband on the battlefield and leading an army of women against the enemy. No, Margaret would answer, women too should be encouraged to undertake “any thing that may bring honour to our sex: for…though we be inferior to men, let us shew ourselves a degree above beasts…”
Her interior, imaginary world she could make and change however she pleased…”gaining as much pleasure and delight as a world can afford,” writing, “though I cannot be Henry the Fifth or Charles the second, yet I endeavor to be Margaret the First…I have made a world of my own: for which nobody, I hope will blame me, since it is everyone’s power to do the like.”
A poem written by her husband:
When one doth ask, ‘what news, I pray you, Sir?’
I answer, ‘yet I did not hear from her.’
‘zounds, I mean Bristol,’ says he, ‘can you tell?’
I answer, ‘I do hope that she is well.’
‘The peace made in Ireland, they say?’
I tell him, ‘I do think she’ll send today’
‘Are the Scots turned unto the King? Pray speak.’
‘If she not love me then my heart will break.’
Say I. Says he, ‘Your answers mad make me.’
Sometimes Margaret’s emotion got the better of her judgment and she wrote to her husband, “though I give you all the love I have, yet it is too little for your merit…could I wish for more love than ever was and shall be, yet my wish could not be so copious but you would still be as far beyond it as your worth is above other men’s.”
Her eccentricity and nickname Mad Madge came from many features of writing. First there was the masculine content, the philosophical theorizing , political satire, blood scenes of war, moral debates and denunciations of humanity’s pride…in addition, Margaret’s views were often unusual. Her poems provided perhaps the first atomic theory of nature to be published in England, and reeked of the atheism for which the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus were notorious. Much of it was considered dangerous free thinking.
To her ardent supporter husband, assaults on the actual writer of her work seemed incomprehensible… “Here’s the crime, a lady writes them and to entrench so much upon the male prerogative is not to be forgiven.” This sense of male prejudice was growing on Margaret too. Contempt for women, “thinking it impossible we should have either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we had not rational souls as well as men.” This masculine contempt really made women inferior, inculcating “a custom of dejectedness…which made us quit all industry towards profitable knowledge.” Occupied only in “low and petty employments,” women lost their “higher capacities…”
Her works were meant to raise questions for her readers to ponder and discuss. She and her husband envisaged real-life groups gathering to waste a tedious winter’s night beside the fire, with sweetmeats and wine. Reading her stories aloud, such companies would then talk over the issues raised.
For Margaret, as a relatively uneducated woman writer who aimed for originality of thought rather than polish in language, the notion of melancholy as inspiration, supported her own view that a writer’s ability derived from innate natural genius rather than any formal training. To her melancholy was more than a source of creativity. It was a moral ideal of how to live.
I read “The Description of a New World, called the Blazing-World” written in 1656 this year and it was a mad, kaleidoscopic fantasy/sci fi work and am fascinated by the author’s life and work. I did study some European History in high school, but dates had never solidified in my mind, and in my mind (kidding) they were still speaking Old English as far as I knew in the 1600s, so it was an eye opener to learn of her role and success. Some of the book spent so much time on the family finances and political intrigues hat were boring, but still a good book, and biographies are not my favorite genre.
Much of Margaret’s writing was influenced by the conversation and literary games of feminine salon culture, with its taste for wit and wordplay. Striking, far-fetch comparisons- as when she likened poetry and history to the dances of the France galliard and the Spanish pavan- were a prominent feature of the style, and many of the pieces she wrote consisted largely or wholly of extended similes. Her essay titled “Of Several Writings,” for instance, formed an elaborate analogy between literature and human society where different kinds of books were revealed a judges, lawyers… merchants, conjurers, cut-purses, bawds… In another salon tradition, Margaret created 55 short allegories. The mind is a garden, the world is a shop, the head is a parliament of thoughts or a wilderness of beast, thoughts are pancakes tossed in the pan of the brain, married life is a stew of troubles and vexations.
Walking in the fields and woods in the essay “A Dialogue of Birds,” Margaret wrote the tales of sparrow, magpie, finches, linnets, partridge, woodcock, quail, snipe, swallows and parrot as each told of mankind’s particular cruelties to their kind- hunting them with dogs and hawks, wasting their flesh in gluttonous feasting, caging them. Even for an orak tree- “king of all the wood,” cut down by his overambitious, ungrateful subjects, mankind- she was a forerunner of modern ecology. Margaret was setting herself against he entire Judeo-Christian tradition of man’s superiority over the natural world and his god-given right to use it as he wills. For all we knew, she argued in yet more poems, beast, bird, and fishes might have as much intelligence as us, or even more.
From 1600 to 1640, fewer than 80 books by women had been published in England (1/2 of 1% of all books printed) and many had appeared posthumously. In 1653 Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies was the first book of English poetry to be published by a woman under her own name. She “imagined I will be censured by my own sex; and men will cast a smile of scorn upon my book, because they think thereby women encroach too much upon their prerogatives; for they hold books as their crown…” She felt is was her moral duty to put her talents to use. “A smile of neglect cannot dishearten me, no more can a frown of dislike affright me…my mind’s too big.”
Cavendish became the most prolific and wide-ranging female author that the English language had ever seen. in a literary career of 20 years, she wrote 23 volumes; in an age of polymaths, when philosophers wrote poetry and playwrights studied the sciences, Cavendish ranged even more widely than most- 24 plays, a large collection of short fiction in prose and verse, realistic and fantastic, a book of orations, a volume of letters, of essays, an autobiography, and biography, 6 philosophical treatises, and a utopia.
In the late summer of 1656, Margaret published Nature’s Pictures with an autobiography at the end, and no woman had ever published- or probably ever written an autobiography like Margaret’s. Couched purely in secular terms, with none of the religious reflection that was a normal preoccupation of women who kept diaries or wrote accounts of their lives, it presented an unorthodox, individualist woman who was not afraid to admit to her unfeminine, perhaps even unchristian ambitions.
While other teenage girls talked about love and young men, Margaret “confess’d I only was in love with three dead men, which were dead long before my time, the one was Caesar for his valour, the second Ovid, for his wit, and the third was our countryman Shakespeare.” Margaret later became the first woman to write a critical appreciation of Shakespeare’s work.
“Shall only men sit in honour’s chair, and women stand as waiters by?...shall only men live by fame, and women die in oblivion?” demands Lady Victoria, the heroine of Margaret’s play Bell in Campo, who insists on joining her husband on the battlefield and leading an army of women against the enemy. No, Margaret would answer, women too should be encouraged to undertake “any thing that may bring honour to our sex: for…though we be inferior to men, let us shew ourselves a degree above beasts…”
Her interior, imaginary world she could make and change however she pleased…”gaining as much pleasure and delight as a world can afford,” writing, “though I cannot be Henry the Fifth or Charles the second, yet I endeavor to be Margaret the First…I have made a world of my own: for which nobody, I hope will blame me, since it is everyone’s power to do the like.”
A poem written by her husband:
When one doth ask, ‘what news, I pray you, Sir?’
I answer, ‘yet I did not hear from her.’
‘zounds, I mean Bristol,’ says he, ‘can you tell?’
I answer, ‘I do hope that she is well.’
‘The peace made in Ireland, they say?’
I tell him, ‘I do think she’ll send today’
‘Are the Scots turned unto the King? Pray speak.’
‘If she not love me then my heart will break.’
Say I. Says he, ‘Your answers mad make me.’
Sometimes Margaret’s emotion got the better of her judgment and she wrote to her husband, “though I give you all the love I have, yet it is too little for your merit…could I wish for more love than ever was and shall be, yet my wish could not be so copious but you would still be as far beyond it as your worth is above other men’s.”
Her eccentricity and nickname Mad Madge came from many features of writing. First there was the masculine content, the philosophical theorizing , political satire, blood scenes of war, moral debates and denunciations of humanity’s pride…in addition, Margaret’s views were often unusual. Her poems provided perhaps the first atomic theory of nature to be published in England, and reeked of the atheism for which the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus were notorious. Much of it was considered dangerous free thinking.
To her ardent supporter husband, assaults on the actual writer of her work seemed incomprehensible… “Here’s the crime, a lady writes them and to entrench so much upon the male prerogative is not to be forgiven.” This sense of male prejudice was growing on Margaret too. Contempt for women, “thinking it impossible we should have either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we had not rational souls as well as men.” This masculine contempt really made women inferior, inculcating “a custom of dejectedness…which made us quit all industry towards profitable knowledge.” Occupied only in “low and petty employments,” women lost their “higher capacities…”
Her works were meant to raise questions for her readers to ponder and discuss. She and her husband envisaged real-life groups gathering to waste a tedious winter’s night beside the fire, with sweetmeats and wine. Reading her stories aloud, such companies would then talk over the issues raised.
For Margaret, as a relatively uneducated woman writer who aimed for originality of thought rather than polish in language, the notion of melancholy as inspiration, supported her own view that a writer’s ability derived from innate natural genius rather than any formal training. To her melancholy was more than a source of creativity. It was a moral ideal of how to live.
February 9, 2017
I've been plugging away at this one for most of the year. I'd not heard of Mad Madge before reading this biography. While I found the book somewhat interesting, it dragged on and on with many unnecessary detail (in my opinion). I appreciated the numerous quotations from primary references, but it got to a point where I felt the author was putting them in just to prove she'd done the research. Average bio.
September 5, 2017
A fascinating biography of the first major woman writer in English.
She adored her elderly husband, she was a crazy fashionista, (I wish we could have seen her costumes!) and she was a ruthless landowner, ensuring all her rents were paid up - because she needed the money! Margaret Cavendish was also a philosopher, dramatist and fiction writer. She also dabbled in quack medicine and was an agnostic, if not a downright atheist.
The modern world would have loved her.
She adored her elderly husband, she was a crazy fashionista, (I wish we could have seen her costumes!) and she was a ruthless landowner, ensuring all her rents were paid up - because she needed the money! Margaret Cavendish was also a philosopher, dramatist and fiction writer. She also dabbled in quack medicine and was an agnostic, if not a downright atheist.
The modern world would have loved her.
March 20, 2016
3.5 Stars.
I knew nothing about Margaret, and she was definitely an interesting person. I did feel that this book was a bit too dry at times - I could have done without a lot of the very detailed discussion of their financial troubles. Even though I didn't love the book, I liked it enough that I'd recommend it to other fans of this era of history.
I knew nothing about Margaret, and she was definitely an interesting person. I did feel that this book was a bit too dry at times - I could have done without a lot of the very detailed discussion of their financial troubles. Even though I didn't love the book, I liked it enough that I'd recommend it to other fans of this era of history.
November 20, 2018
3,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2018/11/10...
February 24, 2025
This is simply a magnificent biography. It took me several years to read, just because there was so much detail I wanted to absorb and rushing through would be contrary to that goal. Katie Whitaker seems to have as her aim to rehabilitate Margaret's reputation (this was published in 2002, before the current craze for taking Margaret seriously as an author/scientist/poet) and in that she succeeds.
Among the biographies of Margaret that I have read (the others being Douglas Grant's and Francesca Peacock's), this is by far the most insightful and the most comprehensive, with the most impact. It's not even close. Grant's was written long ago, so it deserves credit for giving Margaret the respect she was due, and Peacock's seems not to have striven for comprehension and detail, so the aims were different. Still, if you're interested in Margaret Cavendish's life and work on a more than casual basis, this is the one to turn to. (There are a couple others that I haven't read that do not seem as magisterial either, being focused on, for example, her scientific views or otherwise constrained.)
Some things I especially liked:
- Whitaker believes Margaret was dyslexic, which accounts for her wild inability to spell.
- The biography never strays too far from the financial realities of the Cavendishes' lives, leading to some gossipy detail about financial scandals that occurred toward the end of Margaret's life.
- Margaret's social circles are rendered in vivid detail, with banquets and parties and visits that reflect a very active, layered social life (which I'm not sure is the first thing people think of when they think about her).
"I have an opinion, which troubles me like a conscience, that 'tis a part of honour to aspire towards a fame...to love perfection...[and] to aim at excellencies." -Margaret Cavendish
Among the biographies of Margaret that I have read (the others being Douglas Grant's and Francesca Peacock's), this is by far the most insightful and the most comprehensive, with the most impact. It's not even close. Grant's was written long ago, so it deserves credit for giving Margaret the respect she was due, and Peacock's seems not to have striven for comprehension and detail, so the aims were different. Still, if you're interested in Margaret Cavendish's life and work on a more than casual basis, this is the one to turn to. (There are a couple others that I haven't read that do not seem as magisterial either, being focused on, for example, her scientific views or otherwise constrained.)
Some things I especially liked:
- Whitaker believes Margaret was dyslexic, which accounts for her wild inability to spell.
- The biography never strays too far from the financial realities of the Cavendishes' lives, leading to some gossipy detail about financial scandals that occurred toward the end of Margaret's life.
- Margaret's social circles are rendered in vivid detail, with banquets and parties and visits that reflect a very active, layered social life (which I'm not sure is the first thing people think of when they think about her).
"I have an opinion, which troubles me like a conscience, that 'tis a part of honour to aspire towards a fame...to love perfection...[and] to aim at excellencies." -Margaret Cavendish
October 14, 2022
I really enjoyed this biography of this very fascinating dynamo of literature, science, and poetry - whose accomplishments are all the more notable because of her gender. Whitaker situates the life of Margaret née Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, at a fascinating intersection of culture, politics, and social history in 17th century England and Europe. The author provides fascinating detail about what it was like to be a young aristocratic female in rural Caroline England (Margaret was born in 1623), to be a Royalist exile in Paris and Antwerp in the 1640s and 1650s, and then how Margaret expressed her interests as the loved and honored spouse of one of the most powerful magnates (William Cavendish, the long lived Duke of Newcastle) during first decade of the Restoration.)
By the way, the title is ironic - Katie Whitaker takes Margaret seriously, and does not follow the caricature of a Margaret as a completely dotty "Margaret Rutherford" type one mis-step away from an asylum.
By the way, the title is ironic - Katie Whitaker takes Margaret seriously, and does not follow the caricature of a Margaret as a completely dotty "Margaret Rutherford" type one mis-step away from an asylum.
August 9, 2018
An interesting account of a woman writing and being published in the 17th Century, her family were royalists before, during and after the civil war, she was in the household of Charles 1 wife and then fled to Europe, where she met and married a duke and then hosted many of the then worlds' thinkers before they returned to England where she became a published writer.
May 14, 2023
An interesting book about an aristocratic woman who was obsessed with writing even though she had no idea how to spell and punctuate. She also lacked in education but because she was surrounded by intellectual activity and a supportive husband, her universe blossomed. I loved the way the author blended a woman's story into a Stuart reign (and non-reign) background.
June 11, 2020
A most interesting book about the life of a seriously impressive woman. Sometimes I felt there was a wee bit too much detail but it is well worth reading.
August 3, 2015
Margaret Lucas Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, lived a life of wealth and indulgence during the 17th century. Born in 1623, her wealthy family followed Charles I in his war against Oliver Cromwell and his troops. While war raged across England, Margaret, as a maid of honor, accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to Paris where she met William Cavendish, one of the richest and notable of the King's supporters. Married in France, the couple were in exile for fifteen years before the restoration of the monarchy; Margaret, raised as the youngest child in her family and much indulged, never learned the roles of a woman of her position in home and society, but instead followed her desire to write. Husband William, thirty years her senior, wrote poetry and plays and adored her efforts. Together, their life was unconventional for the times, but was steeped in the intellectual interchange of ideas, with contact with the intelligentsia of both Europe and England: Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Robert Boyle. Author Katie Whitaker's research results present a balanced picture of the duchess as a writer and a scientist while disputing the reputation of Margaret Cavendish as "mad" or insane; rather, Whitaker explores the eccentricities and unusual career choice for a woman of "Mad Madge's" historical period.
February 12, 2012
This is a thorough and entertaining biography of a remarkable woman, who published in just about every genre possible at a time when women weren't expected to ever publish; if they wrote, it was to be circulated only among friends and family.
My only problem? I didn't like Mad Madge very well. Like Fanny Burney, I think she's admired best from a distance (there's nothing like reading Burney's diary and letters to realize what a stick in the mud she was).
The Duchess of Newcastle, despite her intellectual versatility, was proud, haughty, conservative, and the worst sort of absolute royalist (at least until her husband didn't get his due, in her mind, after the Restoration). Politically, I found her views abhorrent. Her plays and poetry are excruciating to read. It's only in her natural philosophical work (she was feted by the Royal Society, the first woman to attend a meeting!) that I enjoyed her. Her life itself, though, makes for fascinating reading.
Katie Whitaker does a magnificent job of setting the stage for the upheaval of the Civil War and of presenting the life of the exiles in France and the Netherlands. I gained a much more nuanced understanding of what exiles dealt with from this book than I've gleaned from other sources.
My only problem? I didn't like Mad Madge very well. Like Fanny Burney, I think she's admired best from a distance (there's nothing like reading Burney's diary and letters to realize what a stick in the mud she was).
The Duchess of Newcastle, despite her intellectual versatility, was proud, haughty, conservative, and the worst sort of absolute royalist (at least until her husband didn't get his due, in her mind, after the Restoration). Politically, I found her views abhorrent. Her plays and poetry are excruciating to read. It's only in her natural philosophical work (she was feted by the Royal Society, the first woman to attend a meeting!) that I enjoyed her. Her life itself, though, makes for fascinating reading.
Katie Whitaker does a magnificent job of setting the stage for the upheaval of the Civil War and of presenting the life of the exiles in France and the Netherlands. I gained a much more nuanced understanding of what exiles dealt with from this book than I've gleaned from other sources.
November 13, 2011
Well, I finally finished "Mad Madge". I bet you thought I never would. I really enjoyed this book. It took me a long time to finish it, but I savored every moment. Some reviewers thought it slow, but that is what I liked about it. It was not a "page turner", but held my interest. If you like history, you might like this peek at the mid-1600's through Margaret's eyes. I thought Ms. Whitaker's research excellent. Not only was Margaret not "mad", but was an imminent figure of her time as noted throughout the book and in the Epilogue. I recommend it to you.
June 19, 2016
An interesting and well researched look at a figure that is not well known. It's a good glimpse into several important historical figures of the Civil War and Restoration eras as well as a solid entry into literary history and women's role in literary history. It's a little dry at times and doesn't flow as well as I'd like but fans of British history, literary history, and women's studies will likely find it a worthwhile read.
August 22, 2010
An interesting woman but not the most enthralling of biographies. Good to read if you know nothing about Margaret Cavendish but I found this to be a bit hard going and unfortunately a challenge to finish.
Want to read
November 14, 2015I read to about pp 100 -- and was interested in the historical details of the "Civil War" period, but wasn't entranced enough by the prose of the biographer, alas!
I may return to it if i end up having a full-on Margaret Cavendish obsession ....
I may return to it if i end up having a full-on Margaret Cavendish obsession ....
March 10, 2014
What a fascinating lady. So bold and brave to write in such a male dominated world. She is one I never heard about until a friend gave me this book. Admiration abounds from me for her and I believe this bio more than likely did her justice.
July 29, 2016
I found this an interesting if slow read as, although she is Duchess of Newcastle, she was part of the Cavendish family of Welbeck, the estate where I lived when Steven was born, plus she was a writer ahead of her time.
Read
February 10, 2010Just begun reading this amazing story about a woman who lived 500 years ago. My thoughts ... who will make a difference 500 years from NOW?
Read
March 23, 2016Biog N536w 2003
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews