{"product_id":"margaret-cavendish-isbn-9781681371580","title":"Margaret Cavendish","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn eclectic collection of poetry by one of 17th century England's boldest, smartest, and independent women.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMargaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a groundbreaking writer—a utopian visionary, a scientist, a science-fiction pioneer. She moved in philosophical circles that included Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes, and she produced startlingly modern poems unlike anything published in the seventeenth century or since, at once scientific and visionary, full of feminist passion and deep sympathy with the nonhuman world. In recent years, Cavendish has found many new admirers, and this selection of her verse by Michael Robbins is an ideal introduction to her singular poetic world.\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Introduction\u003cbr\u003e Note on the Text\u003cbr\u003e Further reading\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e To All Noble and Worthy Ladies\u003cbr\u003e To the Reader\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePoems\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Poetress’s Hasty Resolution\u003cbr\u003e The Poetress’s Petition\u003cbr\u003e An Excuse for So Much Writ upon My Verses\u003cbr\u003e Nature Calls a Council, Which Was Motion, Figure, Matter, and Life, to Advise About Making the World\u003cbr\u003e A World Made by Atoms\u003cbr\u003e The Four Principal Figured Atoms Make the Four Elements, as Square, Round, Long, and Sharp\u003cbr\u003e Of Airy Atoms\u003cbr\u003e Of Air\u003cbr\u003e What Atoms Make a Palsy or Apoplexy\u003cbr\u003e All Things Are Governed by Atoms\u003cbr\u003e A War with Atoms\u003cbr\u003e Atoms and Motion Fall Out\u003cbr\u003e The Agreement of Some Kind of Motion with Some Kind of Atoms\u003cbr\u003e Motion Directs While Atoms Dance\u003cbr\u003e Of the Subtlety of Motion\u003cbr\u003e Of Vacuum\u003cbr\u003e If Infinite Worlds, Infinite Centers\u003cbr\u003e The Infinites of Matter\u003cbr\u003e The Motion of Thoughts\u003cbr\u003e The Motion of the Blood\u003cbr\u003e Of Stars\u003cbr\u003e What Makes Echo\u003cbr\u003e Of Rebounds\u003cbr\u003e Of Light\u003cbr\u003e Of Light and Sight\u003cbr\u003e Of Many Worlds in This World\u003cbr\u003e A World in an Earring\u003cbr\u003e Several Worlds in Several Circles\u003cbr\u003e Clasp\u003cbr\u003e The Circle of the Brain Cannot Be Squared\u003cbr\u003e The Purchase of Poets, or a Dialogue betwixt the Poets, and Fame, and Homer’s Marriage\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue betwixt Man and Nature\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue betwixt the Body and the Mind\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting Him Down\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue of Birds\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue between Melancholy and Mirth\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue betwixt Riches and Poverty\u003cbr\u003e A Dialogue between a Bountiful Knight and a Castle Ruined in War\u003cbr\u003e Of the Shortness of Man’s Life and His Foolish Ambition\u003cbr\u003e A Moral Discourse betwixt Man and Beast\u003cbr\u003e Of the Ant\u003cbr\u003e Of Fishes\u003cbr\u003e A Discourse of the Power of Devils\u003cbr\u003e The Clasp\u003cbr\u003e The Hunting of the Hare\u003cbr\u003e The Hunting of the Stag\u003cbr\u003e Of an Island\u003cbr\u003e The Ruin of the Island\u003cbr\u003e Of Poets and Their Theft\u003cbr\u003e Nature’s Cook\u003cbr\u003e Similizing the Brain to a Garden\u003cbr\u003e Similizing Thoughts\u003cbr\u003e Similizing Fancy to a Gnat\u003cbr\u003e A Woman Dressed by Age\u003cbr\u003e A Description of Shepherds and Shepherdesses\u003cbr\u003e Her Descending Down\u003cbr\u003e Witches of Lapland\u003cbr\u003e An Elegy on My Brother, Killed in These Unhappy Wars\"Virginia Woolf famously described Margaret Cavendish as a cucumber choking the roses. To my mind, Cavendish is the whole garden, prickly and wild and fresh. With no formal education, her fierce and elemental imagination tuned itself to atoms and rabbits, trees and invisible worlds—it vibrates across these pages.\" —Danielle Dutton, author of \u003ci\u003eMargaret the First: A Novel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Margaret Cavendish clearly established herself as an alternative voice  of sceptical wit and humane enquiry, unique among seventeenth-century  women, and prophesying many others. There is something magnificent about  her irrepressible eccentricity. In her own fashion she survived a  social revolution, and bore witness to a scientific one.” —Richard  Holmes\u003cb\u003eMargaret Cavendish\u003c\/b\u003e (1623–1673) was the most prolific woman writer of the Restoration. Born in Essex into a wealthy but untitled family, in 1643 she became maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria. At the outbreak of the First English Civil War, Margaret accompanied the queen in her exile to France; in Paris she met William Cavendish, First Duke of Newcastle, and the two were married in 1645. While the couple lived on the Continent—in Paris, Rotterdam, and Antwerp—Margaret began writing poetry and philosophical essays, and on a visit back to England to petition for her husband’s estate, she published \u003ci\u003ePoems, and Fancies\u003c\/i\u003e (1651) and \u003ci\u003ePhilosophicall Fancies\u003c\/i\u003e (1653). A fashionable eccentric, for the next two decades she wrote poems, stories, plays, romances, biographies, memoirs, natural philosophy, scientific treatises, and, with \u003ci\u003eDescription of a New World, Called the Blazing World\u003c\/i\u003e (1666), one of the earliest works of science fiction. In 1667, she was the first woman invited to attend a meeting of the Royal Society of London. After her death, her husband published a collection of pieces that had been written in her praise, \u003ci\u003eLetters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Robbins\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of two books of poetry and the essay collection\u003ci\u003e Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music\u003c\/i\u003e. His work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e, and several other publications. He is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Montclair State University.","brand":"NYRB Poets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305447739621,"sku":"NP9781681371580","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681371580.jpg?v=1767732258","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/margaret-cavendish-isbn-9781681371580","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}