arts, ideas & societyanalysisThe Public Domain Review1666 · England
A 1666 duchess wrote a novel about ruling another planet, and invented science fiction
The Blazing World (1666), by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, is often called an early work of science fiction. A woman is taken to a parallel world reached through the North Pole, where she becomes Empress ruling over animal-human hybrids and spirits. The book mixes fantasy with ideas of natural philosophy and with reflections on power and gender. Cavendish was one of the first women in England to publish under her own name and, in 1667, the first woman to visit the Royal Society. In a society that excluded women from science, writing gave her a voice.
Cavendish was nicknamed 'Mad Madge' by critics, and Virginia Woolf admired her.
background
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a piece of utopian fiction.
In the novel, a woman from the Kingdom of ESFI (a combined version of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland) is kidnapped by a spurned lover. The angry gods blow the boat transporting them to the North Pole, where its crew dies. The woman is the lone survivor, and she finds a portal into a parallel world. It is inhabited by human–animal hybrids who mistake her for a goddess and choose her as their new empress. She creates a new religion and decides to write down her own version of the Kabbalah.
From Wikipedia: The Blazing World (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗see
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key facts
- Published
- 1666
- Author
- Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
- Created by
- Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Facts: Wikidata (CC0)
Image: The Public Domain Review
