Margaret the First
Danielle Dutton
Catapult
<p><B>One of both <I>Flavorwire</I> and <I>The Millions</I> Most Anticipated Books of 2016</B><BR><I>Margaret the First</I> dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret wrote and published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays, and utopian science fiction at a time when &#147;being a writer" was not an option open to women. As one of the Queen's attendants and the daughter of prominent Royalists, she was exiled to France when King Charles I was overthrown. As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret met and married William Cavendish, who encouraged her writing and her desire for a career. After the War, her work earned her both fame and infamy in England: at the dawn of daily newspapers, she was &#147;Mad Madge," an original tabloid celebrity. Yet Margaret was also the first woman to be invited to the Royal Society of London&#8212;a mainstay of the Scientific Revolution&#8212;and the last...</BR></p>