She was also the first woman to be formally invited to visit the Royal Society and to observe the famous air pump experiments of Robert Boyle. Thanks to her high social status, and her husband’s active and supportive interest in philosophy, she was able to personally know the best minds of her time, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, Walter Charleton, and Joseph Glanvill.
Cavendish was also a natural philosopher in her own right, determined to learn about the latest scientific developments and to engage in philosophical debate despite her lack of any formal education. This was done at a time when most women did not publish works, let alone under their name. She was prolific, publishing more than a dozen original works during her life, under her own name, with her portrait proudly engraved on the frontispieces of her works. – Poems (1653), dedication to “To Natural Philosophers”Ĭavendish is famous today for her plays, letters, orations, poetry and fiction, and was a very popular writer in her time. “If I am condemned, I shall be annihilated to nothing: but my ambition is such, as I would either be a world, or nothing.” Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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