Mad Madge [Paperback]

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 withPoems 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 Madgeis both a lively biography of a fascinating woman and a window on a tumultuous cultural time.

Katie Whitakerreceived an MA in philosophy from the University of Chicago. She received a Ph.D. in the history of science at Cambridge, where she was awarded the Thirlwall Prize and Medal in 1997 for the best original historical research by a Cambridge scholar under thirty. She lives in Yorkshire, England.