How Seventeenth Century Women acquired Scientific Knowledge: the Case of Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish

Centre for Advanced Studies Spring Lecture Series 2012
Dr Liam Semler, Highfields Visiting Fellow and Associate Professor, University of Sydney  

This lecture explores Margaret Cavendish’s early publications (1653-56) and her natural philosophical ideas. It asks: where do her ideas come from and what does this reveal about how seventeenth century women acquired their scientific ideas? 

When Margaret Lucas married William Cavendish, Marques of Newcastle, in 1645, she married into a uniquely supportive and fertile intellectual and aesthetic context. She had always been a writer, but from her marriage she developed a professional and public, authorial persona. She wrote poetry, letters, narratives, and plays, and saw them into print. She also developed her own natural philosophical system via a series of published scientific treatises.