The Blazing World and Other Writings

One of the most diverse and maverick intellectuals of the early modern period, Margaret Cavendish is known for critiquing a wide range of early modern cultural and philosophical beliefs. In this edition Lisa Walters brings together popular works such as The Blazing World, alongside lesser-known poems and prose pieces, like The Ambitious Traitor.

Lisa Walters is Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland. She is the author of Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (2014) and co-editor of Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2022). Dr Walters is also one of the joint editors of the Restoration section of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing.

- Introduction
- Note on the Text
- Select Bibliography
- A Chronology of Margaret Cavendish
- POETRY FROM POEMS AND FANCIES
- Of Many Worlds in this World
- The Soul's Garment
- Of Stars
- Motion Directs, While Atoms Dance
- Motion Makes Atoms a Bawd for Figure
- Nature Calls a Council, Which is Motion, Figure, Matter, and Life To Advise About Making the World
- A Dialogue Betwixt Riches and Poverty
- Of the Ant
- Of the Knowledge of Beasts
- Of Fish
- Earth's Complaint
- The Clasp
- The Hunting of the Hare
- Nature's Oven
- Nature's [Wine] Cellar
- A Dialogue Between an Oak, and a Man Cutting it Down
- from 'A Dialogue betwixt Birds'
- STORIES
- The Blazing World
- The Travelling Spirits
- The Ambitious Traitor
- Assaulted and Pursued Chastity
- PROSE
- from Orations of Diverse Sorts
- from Sociable Letters
- from 'A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life'
- PLAYS
- The Unnatural Tragedy
- The Convent of Pleasure
- Explanatory Notes