Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader Book

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. Birth, Breeding, and Self-fashioning
2. Gender and Serious Play
3. Women and the New Sciences

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle: A Brief Chronology

Part I: Birth, Breeding, and Self-Fashioning

1. A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656)
2. Selections from CCXI Sociable Letters (1664)
3. Preface to Orations of Divers Sorts (1662)
4. Letter of Mary Evelyn to Mr. Ralph Bohun (c. 1667)

Part II: Gender and Serious Play

1. The Convent of Pleasure (1668)
2. Preface to the Reader, The Worlds Olio (1655)
3. Female Orations, from Orations of Divers Sorts (1662)

Part III: Women and the New Science

1. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World (1666)
2. Selections from Poems and Fancies (1653)
3. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627)
4. Selections from Letters and Poems in Honour of... Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (1676)
5. Aphra Behn, Preface to her translation of Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1688)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography