A princely brave woman essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

Part 1 Prose fictions: contracting readers - "Margaret Newcastle" and the rhetoric of conjugality, Kate Lilley; "How great is thy change" - familial discourses in the Cavendish family, Marion Wynn-Davies; "Of Mixt Natures" - questions of genre in Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World", Nicole Pohl; autobiography, parody and the "Sociable Letters" of Margaret Cavendish, James Fitzmaurice. Part 2 Drama: writing for the Brian and writing for the boards - the producibility of Margaret Cavendish's dramatic texts, Judith Peacock; making a spectacle - Margaret Cavendish and hte staging of the self, Rebecca D'Monte; "The Close Opened" - a reconstruction of "private" space in the writings of Margaret Cavendish, Jule Sanders. Part 3 Poetry: imagining the mind - Cavendish's Hobbesian allegories, Jay Stevenson; Margaret Cavendish's "Poems and Fancies" and Thomas Harriots' treatise on infinity, B.J. Sokol; a well-spun yarn - Margaret Cavendish and Homer's Penelope, Emma Rees. Part 4 Natural philosophy: Margaret Cavendish and Henry More, Sarah Hutton; variation, irregularity and probabilism - Margaret Cavendish and natural philosophy as rhetoric, Stephen Clucas; Margaret Cavendish and the Doctors of Physick and advice to the sick, Susan Fitzmaurice; paradigms and politics - Hobbes and Cavendish contrasted, Neil Ankers.