The Blazing World and Other Writings

by Margaret Cavendish, Kate Lilley (Editor), Kate Lilley (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140433722
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/1994
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.07(w) x 7.73(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623 - 1673). A Royalist during English Civil War, Margaret Lucas was Maid of Honor to Queen Henrietta Maria from 1643 to 1645. She wrote a total of fourteen works on a broad selection of topics: scientific and philosophical treatises, science fiction, a biography, an autobiography, essays, letters, poetry, "orations", and several plays. Kate Lilley was born in Perth. She completed her doctorate on Masculine Elegy at the University of London and went on to postdoctoral research at St Hilda's College, Oxford as the Julia Mann Junior Research Fellow. She now teaches Literary History and Critical Theory at the University of Sydney. She has published many essays on contemporary Australian and American poetry, especially the work of John Tranter, and on 17th century women's writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Margaret Cavendish
POETRY FROM POEMS AND FANCIES
Of Many Worlds in this World
The Soul's Garment
Of Stars
Motion Directs, While Atoms Dance
Motion Makes Atoms a Bawd for Figure
Nature Calls a Council, Which is Motion, Figure, Matter, and Life To Advise About Making the World
A Dialogue Betwixt Riches and Poverty
Of the Ant
Of the Knowledge of Beasts
Of Fish
Earth's Complaint
The Clasp
The Hunting of the Hare
Nature's Oven
Nature's [Wine] Cellar
A Dialogue Between an Oak, and a Man Cutting it Down from 'A Dialogue betwixt Birds'
STORIES
The Blazing World
The Travelling Spirits
The Ambitious Traitor
Assaulted and Pursued Chastity
PROSE
from Orations of Diverse Sorts
from Sociable Letters^from 'A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life'
PLAYS
The Unnatural Tragedy
The Convent of Pleasure
Explanatory Notes