The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World - Softcover

Cavendish, Lady Margaret Lucas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9187611104 ISBN 13: 9789187611100

Publisher: Timaios Press, 2016

Synopsis

In this remarkable proto-science fiction story from 1666--which also bear striking resemblances with modern fantasy--the author Lady Margaret Cavendish explores an allegorical and satirical world, which she finds through a portal at the North Pole. The bizarre beings in this world need to understand the true meaning of science and philosophy, which Lady Cavendish provides them, and thus she becomes their empress. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World criticize and explore such issues as science, gender and power.

The natural philosopher, author and poet Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-73) lived during the scientific revolution and participated in this brand new world, with contemporaries such as Descartes, Leibniz and Newton. One of her correspondents was the astronomer Huygens. She was the first--and during a long time the only--woman who was allowed to attend a meeting at Royal Society of London.

Margaret was viewed by her contemporaries as being rather eccentric. She was extravagant and flirtatious, accused of using speech full of "oaths and obscenity," and was noted for her unusual sense of fashion. Today, she is honored as an original, unique and clear-sighted thinker, as well as an early feminist.

About this title

From the Back Cover

First published in 1666, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World is the first fictional portrayal of women and the new science. In Blazing World, Cavendish depicts her heroine, the Empress, in multiple roles. The Empress is leader of a dreamlike utopian world reachable through the North Pole, filled with talking animals and intelligent hybrid creatures. She establishes a royal society of scientists, initiates learned conferences, interrogates existing knowledge, and spends her days speculating on natural philosophy. She also forms a lively intellectual collaboration with the “Duchess of Newcastle,” a female character summoned from Earth. A companion volume to Cavendish’s important Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, Blazing World is the first science-fiction novel known to have been written and published by a woman, and represents a pioneering female scientific utopia.

This Broadview Edition includes related historical materials on the new science and Cavendish’s role in the intellectual world of her time.

About the Author

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was the first Englishwoman to publish a large body of literary and philosophical work in her own lifetime.

Edition details

• Publisher: Timaios Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9187611104
• ISBN 13: 9789187611100
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124