Margaret the First

Resumen del libro

One of both Flavorwires and The Millions Most
Anticipated Books of 2016.
Margaret the First dramatizes the life of Margaret
Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional
17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret wrote and
published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays,
and utopian science fiction at a time when 'being a writer
was not an option open to women. As one of the Queens
attendants and the daughter of prominent Royalists, she
was exiled to France when King Charles I was overthrown.
As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret met and
married William Cavendish, who encouraged her writing
and her desire for a career. After the War, her work earned
her both fame and infamy in England: at the dawn of daily
newspapers, she was 'Mad Madge, an original tabloid
celebrity. Yet Margaret was also the first woman to be
invited to the Royal Society of London'a mainstay of
the Scientific Revolution'and the last for another two
hundred years.
Margaret the First is very much a contemporary novel set
in the past. Written with lucid precision and sharp cuts
through narrative time, it is a gorgeous and wholly new
approach to imagining the life of a historical woman.