1659).

1642 Outbreak of Civil War. Theatres closed.

Lucas family move to Royalist base at Oxford.

1643 Margaret becomes Maid of Honour to Henrietta Maria, Oxford.

1644 Henrietta Maria escapes to Paris, Margaret attending. Battle of Marston Moor: William Cavendish into exile. John Milton, Areopagitica.

1645 Margaret m. William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle (b.1593) in Paris.

1646 End of First Civil War.

1647 Margaret’s sister Mary Lucas Killigrew and mother, Elizabeth Leighton Lucas, the of natural causes; her brother Sir Charles Lucas executed (with Sir George Lisle) and the family tomb broken open.

1648 Second Civil War. Newcastles move to Antwerp.

1649 30 January: Trial and Execution of Charles 1. Commonwealth declared.

14 March: Newcastle banished, estates confiscated.

Gerrard Winstanley, The True Leveller’s Standard.

1650 Descartes dies. Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse.

1651 November: Margaret to London with her brother-in-law, Charles Cavendish.

December: Unsuccessful petition to sequestration committee.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

1653 Cromwell declared Lord Protector.

Early March: Margaret returns to Antwerp.

Late March: Publishes Poems and Fancies.

May: Publishes Philosophical Fancies.

Ann Collins, Divine Songs and Meditations.

1654 Charles Cavendish dies. Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone.

1655 Margaret publishes The World’s Olio and Philosophical and Physical Opinions.

1656 Margaret publishes Nature’s Pictures. James Harrington, Oceana.

1660 Restoration of monarchy and House of Lords.

Newcastles return to England, retire to Welbeck, Nott.

Theatres reopen. Royal Society founded.

1661 Coronation of Charles II. Anne Finch born.

1662 Margaret publishes Orations of Divers Sorts and Plays.

1663 Revised Philosophical and Physical Opinions issued.

1664 Margaret publishes Sociable Letters and Philosophical Letters.

1665 Newcastle made Duke by Charles II.

Robert Hooke, Micrographia. The Great Plague.

1666 Observations on Experimental Philosophy with The Blazing World.

Margaret Fell, Womens Speaking Justified. Great Fire of London.

1667 Margaret publishes Life of William Cavendish, visits Royal Society.

Katherine Philips, Collected Poems (posth.). Milton, Paradise Lost.

1668 Reissues of Observations plus Blazing World, Orations of Divers Sorts, Grounds of Natural Philosophy, Poems or Several Fancies; first publication, Plays never Before Printed.

1670 Behn’s first play, The Forced Marriage produced.

1671 Reissues of The World’s Olio and Nature’s Pictures.

1673 15 December: Margaret dies.

1674 7 January: Buried in Westminster Abbey. Her sisters, Lady Pye and Anne Lucas chief mourners.

Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen.

1675 Life of William Cavendish reissued. Greenwich Observatory opened.

1676 Newcastle dies, interred beside Margaret.

Letters and Poems in Honour of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, ed. William Cavendish.

WORKS BY MARGARET CAVENDISH

Poems, and Fancies, 1653. 2nd edn, 1664. 3rd edn, Poems, or Several Fancies in Verse: with the Animal Parliament, in Prose, 1668.

Philosophical Fancies, 1653.

The World’s Olio, 1655. 2nd edn, 1671.

Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1655. 2nd edn, 1663. Reissued as Grounds of Natural Philosophy, 1668.

Nature’s Pictures, 1656 (including ‘A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life’). 2nd edn, 1671.

Plays, 1662.

Orations of Divers Sorts, 1662. 2nd edn, 1668.

CCXI Sociable Letters, 1664.

Philosophical Letters, 1664.

Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. To which is added, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World, 1666. 2nd edn, 1668.

The Life of… William Cavendish, 1667. 2nd edn, 1675. Latin translation by Walter Charleton, 1668.

Plays, never before Printed, 1668.

SELECTED MODERN EDITIONS

Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Mendelson, eds Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, Calgary: Broadview Press, 1999.

Fitzmaurice, James, ed. Margaret Cavendish: Sociable Letters, New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

James, Susan, ed.