`I am as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First.` When Margaret Cavendish addressed the Royal Society in 1667, Samuel Pepys recorded that her dress was `so antic & her deportment so unordinary, that I do not like her at all`. & indeed, here vividly brought to life by Danielle Dutton, the shy, gifted, & wildly unconventional duchess is wholly `unordinary`, & all the better for it. Exiled to Paris at the start of the English Civil War, Margaret meets & marries William Cavendish &, with his encouragement, begins publishing volumes of poetry & philosophy, which soon become the talk of London. After the Restoration, upon their return to Engl&, Margaret`s infamy grows. She causes controversy wherever she goes, once attending the theatre with breasts bared, & earns herself the nickname ` Mad Madge`. Yet while scorned by many, to others Margaret is a visionary, & to later readers
- including Virginia Woolf
- she was to become an early precursor of feminism. She was the first woman invited to the Royal Society
- & the last for 200 years
- & the first Englishwoman to write explicitly for publication. Unjustly neglected by history, Margaret the First
- as she styled herself
- was a bright, shining paradox. Here, she is brought intimately & memorably to life, tumbling pell-mell across the pages of this exhilarating novel
- an `unordinary` portrait of a woman whose ambitions, & marriage, were often centuries ahead of her time.