Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventee
nth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres
of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly o
riginal work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipw
recked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensu
re that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination.
This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work har
moniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power
and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.
