Margaret Cavendish

When a young woman is shipwrecked in the kingdom of the Blazing World, she befriends the natives, a highly intelligent and tolerant group of humanoid animals. With the help of the locals, the woman becomes the Empress of the island, and leads the Blazing World into a society of peace, equality, and understanding. Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World explores hot-button topics and themes, bringing a perspective that is still fresh modern-day. With imaginative and gripping prose, Cavendish advocates for philosophy over the material world, becoming a pioneer and strong advocate for peace, animals’ rights, feminism, and equality. Her work is considered innovative not only for the exploration of these topics, but also for the invention of a genre. This edition of The Blazing World is printed in a modern font and redesigned with a striking new cover, bringing Cavendish’s trailblazing literature into the 21st century.

First published in 1666, "The Blazing World", is both one of the first novels written in English and one of the earliest works of science fiction. This utopian classic, by Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, is also one of the earliest works by an English woman. Cavendish was an outspoken feminist, at a time when such ideas were virtually unheard of, and a pioneering advocate for a more modern view of gender roles and equality. "The Blazing World" is a surreal and experimental work that describes a fanciful and utopian society that may be reached through the North Pole. A young lady enters this new world and discovers a society full of various kinds of talking animals. She plans an invasion of her old world with the help of fish men, bird men, submarines, and weapons of flaming stone. Part travel memoir and part romance, "The Blazing World" is a wildly creative novel that imagines a world with entirely new ideas of gender, race, and class that were a radical departure from the norms of the seventeenth-century. Also included in this volume are two other works by Cavendish, "The Contract" and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity". This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Blazing World is a utopian kingdom in another world (with different stars in the sky) that can be reached via the North Pole. A young woman enters this other world, becomes the empress of a society composed of various species of talking animals, and organizes an invasion back into her world complete with submarines towed by the "fish men" and the dropping of "fire stones" by the "bird men" to confound the enemies of her homeland, the Kingdom of Esfi.

In 1666, as Sir Isaac Newton is developing differential calculus and Robert Hooke suggests that the force of gravity can be measured utilizing the motion of a pendulum, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, published The Description of A New World, Called the Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World.A young Lady is kidnapped by a visiting merchant who is enchanted with her. Through divine interference, the ship is beset by a storm and everyone but the Lady perishes. Blown up to the North Pole, she inadvertently passes into to another world, the Blazing World, where she is almost immediately made supreme ruler. As the Lady begins to exercise her will, Cavendish lays out her own utopia and discusses a wide range of scientific, political, social, and religious topics. But when a war breaks out in her home world, what will the Lady do with all power of the Blazing World behind her?An adventure tale, a romance, and a work of proto-science fiction, this seventeenth-century utopian novel touches on alchemy, the occult, religion, and natural philosophy while exploring such issues as science, gender, and power.

Written by a 17th-century duchess, this remarkable utopian fantasy represents a forerunner of the science-fiction genre. Its romantic adventures center on the Lady, who is kidnapped, shipwrecked, and transported to the Blazing World, where she marries the emperor and is granted unlimited power. The Lady takes an active interest in science and philosophy, and her benevolent reign outlaws war, religious conflict, and gender discrimination.

This edition aims to make Margaret Cavendish’s most mature philosophical work more accessible to students and scholars of the period. Grounds of Natural Philosophy is important not only because it is Cavendish’s final articulation of her metaphysics but also because it succinctly outlines her fundamental views on “the nature of nature”—or the base substance and mechanics of all natural matter—and vividly demonstrates her probabilistic approach to philosophical enquiry. Moreover, Grounds spends considerable time discussing the human body, including the functions of the mind, a topic of growing interest to both historians of philosophy and literary scholars. This Broadview Edition opens to modern readers a vibrant, unique, and provocative voice of the past that challenges our standard view of seventeenth-century English philosophy.

Published in 1666, The Blazing World stands as one of the first Western works of Science Fiction. In its assertion that all animal flesh is made of rational matter (including that of the female body) Margaret Cavendish wrote the only 17th century text of its kind - a book of gendered natural philosophy.Caught in frost at the North Pole, Cavendish tells the story of a woman who is saved by crossing over from our world, to a whole new Utopia. Amongst gems and stars she finds a city of half-human half-beast scientists. Worm- Men, Bear-Men, Bird-Men and Fish-Men welcome her to their land. Together they toil in their investigations, describing Nature afresh.Cavendish predicted motors, submarines and nautical machinery long before these technologies came to exist in the present. As more than just a work of fantastical invention, The Blazing World is important for its portrayal of invention itself. Enlightenment technology is described here as a recourse to protect the world. All of it. The feeling and reasoning matter of all animals, minerals, trees and plants is significant for its proto-environmentalism and for its path-setting form: philosophy as poetry; science as poetry.

An eclectic collection of poetry by one of 17th century England's boldest, smartest, and independent women. "What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind " Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One's Own. Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a groundbreaking woman writer--a utopian visionary, a scientist, a science-fiction pioneer. She interacted with Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes. And she produced startlingly modern poems unlike anything else published in the seventeenth century for their mixture of scientific and proto-Blakean vision, their deep sympathy with the non-human world, and their feminist passion.

Margaret Cavendish released her Poems and Fancies during a brief reprieve from exile, and at a time when international conversations on questions regarding science, mathematics, and metaphysics significantly advanced the state of knowledge across Britain and Europe despite war and political turmoil. This volume offers the first complete modernized version of the third edition of Cavendish’s book, including prefaces and dedications, all 274 poems on nature’s various avatars, interludes and masques, and the final prose parable, The Animal Parliament. Cavendish offers views on physics, chemistry, algebraic geometry, medicine, political philosophy, ethics, psychology, and animal intelligence, as she develops her own theory of vital matter within the scope of nature’s ordering principles. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. The Toronto Series: Volume 64

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

The Description of a New World: The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a utopian work. This present Description of a New World, was made as an Appendix to my Observations upon Experimental Philosophy; and, having some Sympathy and Coherence with each other, were joyned together as Two several Worlds, at their Two Poles. But, by reason most Ladies take no delight in Philosophical Arguments, I separated some from the mentioned Observations, and caused them to go out by themselves, that I might express my Respects, in presenting to Them such Fancies as my Contemplations did afford. The First Part is Romancical; the Second, Philosophical; and the Third is meerly Fancy; or (as I may call it) Fantastical. And if (Noble Ladies)you should chance to take pleasure in reading these Fancies, I shall account my self a Happy Creatoress: If not, I must be content to live a Melancholly Life in my own World; which I cannot call a Poor World, if Poverty be only want of Gold, and Jewels: for, there is more Gold in it, than all the Chymists ever made.

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

The first science fiction work ever written by a female. It chronicles the adventures of a lady who after being kidnapped finds herself in a different realm. In this incredible world, the animals are highly intelligent and can even speak. Cavendish has cleverly blended her feminist views with science fiction in this spectacular portrayal of a utopian land. Absorbing

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was an English aristocrat, a prolific writer, and a scientist. Her writing addressed a number of topics, including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy. Her utopian romance, The Blazing World, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She is singular in having published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science. She published over a dozen original works; inclusion of her revised works brings her total number of publications to twenty one.