The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Cavendish, Margaret

United States

Penguin Classics

A certain Lady is kidnapped, shipwrecked, and transported to the extraordinary Blazing World, where she marries an emperor and attains unlimited power. Hers is a benevolent reign that ends war, religious conflict, and gender discrimination. Remarkably, the Lady's story was conceived in the seventeenth century, when utopian fiction was in its infancy. The tale is all the more noteworthy for its progressive ideals, its female protagonist, and its authorship by a woman. Originally published in 1666, The Blazing World was written by Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle and a prolific writer who made thriving ventures into the male-dominated fields of politics, science, philosophy, and literature. This science fiction prototype is also a romance, an adventure story, and even an autobiography, with a cameo appearance by the Duchess herself. A pioneering vision of a feminist utopia, it offers a fascinating firsthand view of the ideas that powered the Scientific Revolution.

The Blazing World (Dover Thrift Editions: SciFi/Fantasy)

Literary

Dover Publications

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) is unique among women writers of the seventeenth century in the scale of her output and in her aspiration to create a philosophical system. This edition presents Cavendish as a political author, and Susan James includes two major texts, the Orations and The Blazing World, accompanied by the standard series features that enables students to gain a better understanding of one of the truly distinctive political voices of the early modern period.

Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Cambridge University Press

History

Europe

Margaret Cavendish: Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Margaret Cavendish's Observations upon Experimental Philosophy holds a unique position in early modern philosophy. Cavendish rejects the picture of nature as a grand machine that was propounded by Hobbes and Descartes; she also rejects the alternative views of nature that make reference to immaterial spirits. Instead she develops an original system of organicist materialism, and draws on the doctrines of ancient Stoicism to attack the tenets of seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy. Her treatise is a document of major importance in the history of women's contributions to philosophy and science.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

The Blazing World

Social Sciences

Formling

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), began her literary career in 1653, with the publication of a volume of her poems and another of her “philosophical fancies.” Her writing continued at a hectic pace for nearly two decades. She did not limit herself to the genres considered “acceptable” for those few women who dared to publish in the late seventeenth century; instead, she wrote philosophical and scientific works, a utopian romance that has often been called the first work of science fiction in English, a biography of her husband, and her own autobiography. She also published two collections of dramatic works: the first of these, Plays, appeared in 1662, the second, Plays, Never before Printed, in 1668. Cavendish was keenly aware that her comedies and tragedies were unlikely to be acted, at least in her lifetime, but that did not deter her. “To those that do delight in scenes and wit / I dedicate my book,” she writes in a brief poem at the beginning of Plays. She continues, “For all the time my plays a-making were, / My brain the stage, my thoughts were acting there.” Today the most widely read of Cavendish’s plays is The Convent of Pleasure, from Plays, Never before Printed. In this provocative comedy, Cavendish presents us with the delightful Lady Happy, whose determined efforts to avoid the pains of men and marriage lead her to construct a convent where women can devote themselves to enjoying life’s pleasures. The women who retreat with her into the Convent of Pleasure are determined to avoid not only the dangers of men and marriage but also of childbirth and motherhood. Even so, they will not deny themselves the pleasures of love. Inside her convent, Lady Happy dares to imagine a radical alternative to marriage: since men and marriage cause only pain and suffering, perhaps a woman can fulfill her emotional and sexual desires with another woman. When she finds her soul’s mate in a princess (rather than a prince), Lady Happy poses a critical question to herself and to us: “But why may not I love a woman with the same affection I could a man?” This Saltar’s Point Press edition, designed for classroom use, provides readers with an ample introduction to Cavendish’s life and work, a carefully modernized and well-presented text, helpful glosses and notes, a bibliography with references for further reading, and a chronology of Cavendish’s published work.

The Convent of Pleasure

Dramas & Plays

Saltar's Point Press

When Margaret Cavendish published her first collection of dramatic work in 1662, she was keenly aware that none of her comedies or tragedies was unlikely to be acted, at least in her lifetime--but that did not deter her. “To those that do delight in scenes and wit / I dedicate my book,” she writes at the beginning of the volume entitled, simply, "Plays." As for the hard reality that her plays were not to be produced? She has an answer for that as well: “For all the time my plays a-making were, / My brain the stage, my thoughts were acting there.” "The Female Academy," the last play in her 1662 collection, opens with a fait accompli—a group of “old matrons” has established an educational institution devoted exclusively to the education of young women, “a house wherein a company of young ladies are instructed . . . to speak wittily and rationally, . . . to behave themselves handsomely, and to live virtuously.” In this play, Cavendish presents the Female Academy as an institution created by women, inhabited solely by women, and operated for the benefit of women. The play also allows us to see the reactions of men, excluded from the Female Academy. Instead of ignoring the school, or wishing its young pupils well in their educational pursuits, men can’t stay away—they hang around and spy on what’s going on through “a large open grate” that allows them to hear the lectures being given inside. The play alternates scenes between the young women inside the Female Academy and the increasingly frustrated men in the outside world. This new edition, designed for classroom use, provides an ample introduction to Cavendish and her work, a carefully modernized text, with helpful glosses and notes, and a useful bibliography with references for further reading.

The Female Academy

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), until recently remembered more as a flamboyant eccentric than as a serious writer, was in fact the most prolific, thought-provoking, and original woman writer of the Restoration. Cavendish is the author of many poems, short stories, biographies, memoirs, letters, philosophical and scientific works (including The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, the first work of science fiction by a woman), and nineteen plays. "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays collects four of Cavendish's dramatic works that are among the most revealing of her attitudes toward marriage and her desire for fame. Loves Adventures (1662) centers on a woman succeeding in war and diplomacy by passing as a man. Similarly, the heroine of Bell in Campo (1662) rescues her husband at the head of an army of women in this tale of a marriage of near equals. The Convent of Pleasure (1668) proposes a separatist community of women and has received attention for its suggestion of lesbian sexuality. The Bridals (1662), a more typical restoration comedy satirizing marriage, rounds out the collection. Edited with notes and annotation by Anne Shaver, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays also contains a timeline, biography and bibliography of the Duchess, an appreciation of Cavendish's life and work, and a bibliography of critical essays. Also included are all of Cavendish's epistles To the Reader as well as Other Preliminary Matter from Playes (1662), and Cavendish's original preface to Plays Never Before Printed (1668). A valuable collection from an extraordinary writer, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays raises important issues about women and gender.

The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays

Johns Hopkins University Press

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