The Blazing World and Other Writings

byMargaret Cavendish, Abigail Thaw (Read by), Kate Lilley (Introducer)

Penguin Classics

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Abigail Thaw, best known for her role as Dorothea Frazil in Endeavour. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Kate Lilley, also read by Abigail Thaw.


Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

About Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-73), became a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, travelling with her into Parisian exile in 1644. There, she married William Cavendish, Marquis (later Duke) of Newcastle. Between 1653 and 1668 Margaret Cavendish published a dozen substantial books including poetry, moral tales, speculative fiction, romance, scientific treatises, natural philo­sophy, familiar letters, closet drama, orations, an autobiographical memoir and a biography of her husband. The sheer quantity and variety of Cavendish's published writing was unprecedented amongst earlier English women.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780141993393
  • Length: 631 minutes
  • Price: £13.00
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