Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle was an accomplished English philosopher, poet, physicist, fiction writer, and playwright. During her lifetime, she wrote over 12 original literary works, several of which were well-known due to her high social rank. Margaret's high social status allowed her to meet and chat with some of the most prominent and influential thinkers of her time. Margaret Lucas, born to Sir Thomas Lucas (1573-1625) and Elizabeth Leighton (died 1647), was the family's youngest child. She had four sisters and three brothers: royalists Sir John Lucas, Sir Thomas Lucas, and Sir Charles Lucas, who controlled the property of St John's Abbey in Colchester. Her husband, then-marquess William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, served as a Royalist commander in Northern England during the First English Civil War before going into self-imposed exile in France in 1644. Margaret joined him and stayed abroad until the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Cavendish, a poet, philosopher, prose romance author, essayist, and playwright, published under her own name at a time when most female writers were anonymous. She discussed gender, power, manners, scientific technique, and philosophy. Her utopian romance The Blazing World is one of the first works of science fiction. She was exceptional for her period in that she published substantially in natural philosophy and early modern science, with over a dozen original works and 21 updated works.
