| Full Name | Cavendish, Margaret |
|---|---|
| Birth Date | 1623 |
| Death Date | 1673 |
| Birth Place | Essex (England) |
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| Biography | Margaret Cavendish was born into an aristocratic family. Apart from the basic education including reading, writing, music and dancing, she also had access to scholarly libraries, in which she educated herself in multiple disciplines by reading avidly. In 1642, she became a maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. In 1644, with the onset of the English Civil War, Cavendish accompanied the Queen into exile in France; they did not return to England until the restoration of the crown in 1660. During the exile, in 1645, she married William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a man more than 30 years her senior. Through the “Cavendish Circle” meetings that he organized, she was able to interact with philosophers of the day, such as Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, and Kenelm Digby. Cavendish wrote in a wide variety of genres: letters, science fiction, philosophical essays, poems, plays, prose, criticisms, and autobiography. Her works cover an array of topic from metaphysics and epistemology to social philosophy. In 1667, Cavendish became the first woman to be invited to attend meetings at the Royal Society, a mostly male-dominated international network of leading scientific minds. |
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| Created | 2017-01-11, 10:49:38 |
| Updated | 2022-15-01, 03:57:58 |