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Bettie's Books

A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.

Mad Madge by Katie Whitaker

Mad Madge - Katie Whitaker

bookshelves: history, hardback, published-2002, stuarts, restoration, civil-war-english, biography, books-about-books-and-book-shops, summer-2014, skoolzy-stuff, one-penny-wonder, under-50-ratings, women

Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Miss M
Recommended for: Wanda, Jemidar, Laura
Read from June 02 to 14, 2014

 



Description: Margaret Cavendish's life as a writer and noblewoman unfolded against the backdrop of the English Civil War and Restoration. Pursuing the only career open to women of her class, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Henrietta Maria. Exiled to Paris with the Queen, she met and married William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle. In exile, Margaret did something unthinkable for a seventeenth-century Englishwoman: she lived proudly as a writer. Eventually she published twenty-three volumes, starting with Poems and Fancies, the first book of English poetry published by a woman under her own name. But later generations too easily accepted the disparaging opinions of her shocked critics, and labeled her "Mad Madge of Newcastle."Mad Madge is both a lively biography of a fascinating woman and a window on a tumultuous cultural time.

After the Dissolution, St John's Abbey and land, just outside the city walls of Colchester, was released for a tidy sum to private ownership. It was in this gatehouse that Thomas and Elizabeth raised their young, Margaret being the baby of the family.

Why isn't this biography better known within the history lovers' circle? Because of her prolific and thinly veiled scribblings of actual people and events there was little difficulty in finding so many facts to relate, and Ms Whitaker has done a fine job here in bringing something entirely palatable to the table. Heartily recommended.



TRIVIA: Literature of the Country House Week 1 Bolsover:




CR Mad Madge
TR A Royal Passion