Table of Contents

Introduction

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle: A Brief Chronology

Part I: Birth, Breeding, and Self-fashioning

Part II: Gender and Serious Play

Part III: Women and the New Science

Works Cited and Select Bibliography

About the Author

Sylvia Bowerbank holds a joint apointment in the Arts and Science Programme and the English Department at McMaster University.

Sara Mendelson is a historian who teaches in the Arts and Science Programme at McMaster University.

Reviews

“Paper Bodies gathers together important and representative selections from the poetry, fiction, prefaces, and letters of Margaret Cavendish. The book also sets the work in context by printing extracts from Francis Bacon, Mary Evelyn, and Aphra Behn. Cavendish scholars will be very pleased by the appearance of this highly useful collection.” — James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University“Cavendish always hoped that a future audience might read her texts—the ‘paper bodies’ that remained after her death—more attentively than had her contemporaries. This anthology facilitates that readership. Its lucid introduction and careful selection of texts and contexts adumbrate key topics in Cavendish studies, and its potential to enrich courses on early modern literature, the history of science, and gender studies is great.” — Anna Battigelli, SUNY, Plattsburgh