Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (née Lucas; 1623 – 16 December 1673) was a prolific English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and playwright.

She produced more than 12 original literary works, many of which became well known due to her high social status, which allowed Margaret to meet and converse with some of the most important and influential minds of her time.

[2] As a teenager, she became an attendant on Queen Henrietta Maria and travelled with her into exile in France, living for a time at the court of the young King Louis XIV.

Her husband, then-marquess William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was a Royalist commander in Northern England during the First English Civil War and in 1644 went into self-imposed exile in France.

Cavendish began putting ideas down on paper at an early age, although it was poorly accepted for women to display such intelligence at the time and she kept her efforts in the privacy of her home.

[citation needed] Cavendish noted that her husband liked her bashfulness; he was the only man she was ever in love with, not for his title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty and fidelity.

Cavendish had heard that her husband's estate, sequestrated due to his being a royalist delinquent, would be sold and that she as his wife could hope to benefit from the sale.

Cavendish stated in A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life that her bashful nature, which she described as "melancholia", made her "repent my going from home to see the World abroad."

[19] Cavendish defined and sought self-cures for the physical manifestations of her melancholia, which included "chill paleness", inability to speak, and erratic gestures.

She expected to be criticised for deciding to write a memoir, but retorted that it was written for herself, not for delight, to give later generations a true account of her lineage and life.

[citation needed] Cavendish concluded the collection by stating she was aware that she did not write elegantly and that her phrasing and placement of words could be criticised.

Cavendish, like authors such as Aphra Behn and William Wordsworth, stated her intended audience, writing purpose and philosophy in prefaces, prologues, epilogues and epistles.

Her several epistle dedications for Poems and Fancies often sought to justify writing at a time when women writers were not encouraged and in terms of her subject choice.

As here, Cavendish often employed metaphors to describe her writing in terms of stereotypical feminine tasks or interests, such as spinning, fashion and motherhood.

Cavendish excused errors that might be found in her work as due to youth and inexperience, for she wrote only to distract herself from hardships of her husband's and her own.

She employs a food/feasting metaphor: her poems are not ripe, but applause and praise will make them pass as a "general feast" to those of vulgar taste who take quantity over quality.

The poem The Poetresses (sic) hasty Resolution, like many of Cavendish's epistles, contains excuses for errors that may be found in the poet's work and begs for praise.

The poet states that self-love influences her judgement of her own poetry, which she finds she likes so much that she is moved to continue writing in hope of fame.

If the books suffer such a death (i. e. criticism), she requests silence and that they be forgotten, without alteration or inscriptions, and left undisturbed unless new merit is found.

The stories concern "the advantageous production of woman as spectacle" and "repeatedly [feminise] the aristocratic and chivalric trope (or figure) of the fair unknown.

[29] It relates Cavendish's lineage, social status, fortune, upbringing, education and marriage, describes her pastimes and manners, and offers an account of her personality and ambition, including thoughts on her bashfulness, contemplative nature and writing.

They cover marriage, war, politics, medicine, science, English and classical literature, and miscellaneous matters like gambling and religious extremism.

[34] O'Neill notes that Cavendish's natural philosophy and her writing in general were criticised by many contemporaries and by more recent readers, such as Pepys, Henry More and Virginia Woolf.

The Convent of Pleasure has recently become a staple of high school and university literature courses because of its feminism and Sapphic plot and character elements.

Negative comments can be found by the Royal Society member Samuel Pepys who once wrote of her as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" though he was eager to read her work.

"[45] She also had numerous admirers, Constantijn Huygens, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, John Dryden, Kenelm Digby, Henry More were among them.

[47] In the nineteenth century Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters[48] and so much admired her biography of her husband that he called it a jewel "for which no casket is rich enough.

[53] Yet her knowledge was recognised by some, such as the protofeminist Bathsua Makin: "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men."

[57] Her self inserted as a character named Margaret Cavendish in The Blazing World is said to be among the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope.

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton dramatises her "with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time", as a new approach to "imagining the life of a historical woman".