Mad Madge
Subtitle: the extraordinary life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the first woman to live by her pen
By: Katie Whitaker.
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
Subjects: Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of, 1624?-1674; Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; British -- Europe -- History -- 17th century
Genres: Biography.
Description: "For a seventeenth-century Englishwoman, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, did the unthinkable - she dared to publish and to live proudly as an writer. And despite the scandal her writing life caused, she eventually published twenty-three volumes, ranging from Poems and Fancies, the first book of English poetry published by a woman under her own name, to The Blazing World, the first work of science fiction by a woman.

But she ended up labeled "Mad Madge of Newcastle" by later generations who too easily accepted the disparaging opinions of her shocked critics, who had portrayed her as nothing more than a bizarre eccentric. Now in Mad Madge, Katie Whitaker rescues Margaret from this caricature, and gives us a complete picture as she really was - an imaginative, ambitious and pioneering woman."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 393-406) and index.
Table of contents: title: The Lucases of St. John's; title: Childhood ambitions, 1623-1642; title: The coming of war, 1642; title: A lady at court, 1643-1645; title: The marquess and the queen, 1645; title: Parisian wife, 1646-1648; title: Dutch scholar, 1648-1651; title: Poet and petitioner, 1651-1653; title: Writer in exile, 1653-1655; title: Satirist and storyteller, 1655-1658; title: Restoration, 1658-1662; title: Revisions and controversies, 1663-1667; title: The talk of the town, 1667; title: Queen of philosophers, 1667-1673.