[1] Along with her literary achievements, Cavendish helped manage her father's properties while he spent the English Civil War in exile; she was responsible for a variety of military correspondences and for salvaging many of her family's valuable possessions.

Throughout his life, William added to Bess's wealth and properties—in part by marrying Howard, who was a rich widowed heiress at the time of their marriage.

Her father's assessment of her as “a moste redye writer” carried over into her adult life, when she collaborated with her sister on some literary documents and also wrote her own poetry.

[2] Moreover, during this period of unrest, Jane and her sister Elizabeth began compiling a variety of manuscript writings that they probably started working on as early as 1635—although most of the contents were written during the Civil War.

Frances and Jane would eventually follow Elizabeth to Ashridge for a brief interval because of the relative stability that it offered in contrast to their own besieged home.

Some scholars have read the character of "Lady Tranquility" in Jane and Elizabeth's play The Concealed Fansyes as a satire of Margaret Lucas, but others consider this unlikely.

[3][4] While the fictional father's choice of an unsuitable fiancée may reflect some anxiety on his daughters' parts, there are few if any similarities to the real Margaret Lucas.

Furthermore, the manuscript book which contains The Concealed Fansyes, another play, and a variety of poems, was prepared as a presentation copy, a gift to William Cavendish from his daughters, intended for his pleasure and enjoyment.

Jane Cavendish and her sister, Elizabeth Brackley, "are the only known collaborative female dramatists of the early modern period, and the co-composers of the first extant stage comedy by women in English.

The elegy for Elizabeth is the only trace of it that has yet been discovered, but Nathan Comfort Starr and others have suggested that Jane continued to write poetry throughout her life.

[1] After her death in 1669 from a series of epileptic fits, Jane's impact on Chelsea was chronicled in a funeral sermon by Adam Littleton and an elegy by Thomas Lawrence.

[6] A Celebration of Women Writers (Online editions) Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.