Margaret Lucas Cavendish, first Duchess of Newcastle, remains one of the most remarkable authors of the mid seventeenth century. Praised by the influential philosophers and university faculty of her day, ridiculed by contemporary literati and later biographers, she published thirteen separate volumes of poetry and prose between 1653 and 1668, seeing most of her books through two or more revised editions during the same period. Although her works range from poetry, plays, and prose fiction to letters, orations, and natural philosophy, she has been noted most often as the writer of her husband's biography. Some three hundred years after her death, the range and complexity of Margaret Cavendish's writings are being reconsidered, especially in the context of social history, and she is being acknowledged as an important and underrated figure in the history of English literature.

The youngest child of Thomas Lucas and Elizabeth Leighton Lucas, Margaret was born at...