Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish was a prominent seventeenth century thinker and author, as well as the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society.

Cavendish was born into the aristocracy before the Civil War, and spent many of her early years in exile in Paris.

Whilst there she married William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and through him she mixed in the same circles as the likes of Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes.

Throughout her life Cavendish would publish widely in natural philosophy, poetry, drama and more. One of her most renowned works if ‘The Blazing World’, a fantastical text which imagines a parallel world accessed through the North Pole, inhabited by talking animals. The work is considered one of the earliest examples of science fiction by many today.

The protagonist of Cavendish’s novel is a woman similar to herself, and many of her works considered the female experience. Despite having a lesser impact following her death, more recent scholarship has reassessed Cavendish's legacy and the radical nature of her ideas.

With

Francesca Peacock
Writer and Researcher

Emma Rees
Professor of English Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Chester

And

Daniel Whiting
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton

Producers: Sam Peach & Anishka Sharma

Researcher: Miriam O’Byrne

A world-class seminar every week. Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.