The Blazing World

Margaret Lucas Cavendish was born in 1623 in Colchester, Essex, England—the youngest of eight children in an aristocratic Royalist family. Her father Thomas Lucas died when she was two, but her mother Elizabeth was a formative influence on her life. While Margaret had no formal education, she was privately tutored, read widely, and from a young age, wrote prolifically.

During England’s First Civil War, when King Charles I was deposed and beheaded (see Historical Context below), Elizabeth and Margaret fled to France alongside Queen Henrietta Maria, whom Margaret served as lady-in-waiting. In 1645, Margaret married William Cavendish, the Marquess of Newcastle. Despite the fact that William was more than 30 years her senior, their union was a love match: William encouraged Cavendish to write, helped her continue her education, and paid to publish her books. Cavendish’s monarchist background and her marriage to a commander of Royalist forces formed the political attitudes she displays in her work. The Blazing World does not question the fitness of autocratic rule; instead, its Empress assumes absolute power over the animal-men, and then invades her home country to enable its king to gain total dominion over his world—actions the text lauds.