Cavendish, Margaret Lucas (1623–1673)
Duchess of Newcastle and author of The Blazing World in which the
heroine makes a round trip of the Moon (see Moon
voyages) and planets and thus qualifies as the first fictional female
space traveler. Cavendish was a colorful figure and a prolific and popular
author. The diarist Samuel Pepys described her less kindly as "mad, conceited
and ridiculous." A tremendous self-publicist, she published under her own
name – a radical and deliberate infringement of contemporary proprieties
– a huge body of work encompassing historical treatises, essays, poems,
plays and autobiography. Her personal excess was legendary and when she
made her rare and highly theatrical public appearances, men and women lined
the streets of London to catch a glimpse of her.
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• SCIENCE
FICTION
• WOMEN
IN SPACE
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