'The whole story of this Lady is a romance, and all she doth is romantic'
Pepys Flamboyant, theatrical, exuding ambiguous sexuality, Margaret
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was one of the seventeeth century's most
striking figures, experimental in her personality as much as in her
prolific writings. Both 'The Contract' and 'Assaulted and Pursued Chastity'
(from Nature's Pictures, 1656) are romances which play out the empowering
possibilities of disguise or masking for women. The centrepiece of this
collection is 'The Blazing World', the only known Utopian fiction by a
seventeenth century woman writer, an inventive and extravagant portrayal of
the rise of a woman to absolute power.