Margaret the First

Margaret the FirstBy: Danielle Dutton An inventive, spirited novel about a pioneering woman who was shamed for daring to challenge male dominance in the arts and sciences four centuries ago. Margaret Cavendish was the first woman to address the Royal Society and the first Englishwoman to write explicitly for publication. Wildly unconventional, she was championed by her forward thinking husband and nicknamed Mad Madge by her many detractors. Later, Virginia Woolf would

An inventive, spirited novel about a pioneering woman who was shamed for daring to challenge male dominance in the arts and sciences four centuries ago.

Margaret Cavendish was the first woman to address the Royal Society and the first Englishwoman to write explicitly for publication. Wildly unconventional, she was championed by her forward-thinking husband and nicknamed ‘Mad Madge’ by her many detractors. Later, Virginia Woolf would write, ‘What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!’

Unjustly neglected by history, here Margaret is brought intimately and memorably to life, tumbling pell-mell across the pages of this exhilarating novel — a portrait of a woman whose ambitions were centuries ahead of her time.

• An evocative re-imagining of the life of a groundbreaking English woman; Virginia Woolf called her the first feminist.
• The hardback was reviewed in almost every newspaper, was a booksellers’ favourite, and was a popular book club pick.