Margaret The First

This novel dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret wrote and published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays, and utopian science fiction at a time when "being a writer" was not really an option open to women. While scorned by many at her time, to later readers - including Virginia Woolf - she was to become an early precursor of feminism. A brilliantly odd and absorbing historical novel.