Promotional Information

An eclectic collection of poetry by one of 17th century England's boldest, smartest, and independent women.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
 
Introduction
Note on the Text
Further reading
 
To All Noble and Worthy Ladies
To the Reader
 
Poems
The Poetress’s Hasty Resolution
The Poetress’s Petition
An Excuse for So Much Writ upon My Verses
Nature Calls a Council, Which Was Motion, Figure, Matter, and Life, to Advise About Making the World
A World Made by Atoms
The Four Principal Figured Atoms Make the Four Elements, as Square, Round, Long, and Sharp
Of Airy Atoms
Of Air
What Atoms Make a Palsy or Apoplexy
All Things Are Governed by Atoms
A War with Atoms
Atoms and Motion Fall Out
The Agreement of Some Kind of Motion with Some Kind of Atoms
Motion Directs While Atoms Dance
Of the Subtlety of Motion
Of Vacuum
If Infinite Worlds, Infinite Centers
The Infinites of Matter
The Motion of Thoughts
The Motion of the Blood
Of Stars
What Makes Echo
Of Rebounds
Of Light
Of Light and Sight
Of Many Worlds in This World
A World in an Earring
Several Worlds in Several Circles
Clasp
The Circle of the Brain Cannot Be Squared
The Purchase of Poets, or a Dialogue betwixt the Poets, and Fame, and Homer’s Marriage
A Dialogue betwixt Man and Nature
A Dialogue betwixt the Body and the Mind
A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting Him Down
A Dialogue of Birds
A Dialogue between Melancholy and Mirth
A Dialogue betwixt Riches and Poverty
A Dialogue between a Bountiful Knight and a Castle Ruined in War
Of the Shortness of Man’s Life and His Foolish Ambition
A Moral Discourse betwixt Man and Beast
Of the Ant
Of Fishes
A Discourse of the Power of Devils
The Clasp
The Hunting of the Hare
The Hunting of the Stag
Of an Island
The Ruin of the Island
Of Poets and Their Theft
Nature’s Cook
Similizing the Brain to a Garden
Similizing Thoughts
Similizing Fancy to a Gnat
A Woman Dressed by Age
A Description of Shepherds and Shepherdesses
Her Descending Down
Witches of Lapland
An Elegy on My Brother, Killed in These Unhappy Wars

About the Author

Margaret Cavendish (1623 - 1673) was an aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright. Her utopian romance, The Blazing World, is one of the earliest example of science fiction and she is unique for having published extensively on the subjects of natural philosophy and early modern science. She was also the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London in 1667 where she criticized and engaged with the members Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, and Robert Boyle.

Michael Robbins is a poet and literary critic. He is the author of the poetry collections Alien vs. Predator and The Second Sex and his poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, Harper's, and elsewhere. His critical work has appeared in several publications, including London Review of Books, Chicago Tribune, and Spin. His forthcoming critical work, Equipment for Living, will publish in July 2017. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

"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 Margaret the First: A Novel


“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