Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673)

Margaret Cavendish, née Lucas, was born in Colchester, Essex, one of eight children of a minor landowner. The family's lives were upended in 1642 by violence at the start of the English Civil War. Margaret went to the court of King Charles I at Oxford as a maid-of-honor to Queen Henrietta Maria. When the Queen fled to France, Margaret went with her. There in 1645, she met and married the courtier and author William Cavendish, future 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The couple moved to Antwerp, where she began to write. Between 1654 and 1668, she published more than 14 books; they appeared under her own name at a time when most female writers could only publish anonymously. In addition to fiction and works of natural philosophy (science), she wrote one of the first biographies by a woman written in English. The duchess was widely derided with cruel nicknames, including Mad Madge.