"The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), remembered as a flamboyant eccentric, was in fact one of the most prolific, thought-provoking and original women writers of the Restoration. Cavendish is the author of many poems, short stories, biographies, memoirs, letters, philosophical and scientific works (including "The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World", the first work of science fiction by a woman) and 19 plays. This volume collects four of Cavendish's dramatic works that are among the most revealing of her attitudes towards marriage and her desire for fame. "Loves Adventures" (1662) centres on a woman succeeding in war and diplomacy by passing as a man. Similarly, the heroin of "Bell in Campo" (1662) heads an army of women and rescues her husband in this tale of a marriage of near equals. "The Convent of Pleasure" (1668) proposes a separatist community of women and has received attention for its suggestions of lesbian sexuality. "The Bridals" (1662), is a more typical restoration comedy satirizing marriage. Edited with notes and annotation by Anne Shaver, this volume also contains a timeline, biography and bibliography of the Duchess, an appreciation of Cavendish's life and work, and a bibliography of critical essays. Also included are all of Cavendish's epistles "To the Reader" as well as "Plays, Never Before Printed" (1668).

"Her introductory material places its initial emphasis upon biographical narrative _ an invaluable context in which to understand Cavendish's work, and most especially her dramatic writing, which is obsessed by the cultural anxieties surrounding the female intellectual of high birth who seeks a more public identity." -- Andrew Hiscock, Review of English Studies

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