It was tough enough being ahead of one's time in the 17th century without the added burden of being a woman, as journalist Francesca Peacock illustrates with entertaining conviction in her debut book, Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. In 1667, Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, entered a theater to see a play written by her husband, a disgraced Royalist 30 years her senior, and made an "extravagantly provocative" statement by wearing "a dress so low-cut that 'her breasts' were 'all laid out to view.' " She would secure her place in history by standing out in ways even more daring than her couture. Born Margaret Lucas in 1623, she grew up rich in a Royalist family that suffered devastating losses during the English Civil Wars. Despite her family travails and lifelong battles with "melancholy," she "published poetry, fiction, prose, and philosophy at a time when an infinitesimally small number of women were writing at all." Peacock recounts Cavendish's considerable achievements in copious detail.
One of Cavendish's writings is The Blazing World, "among the first recorded works of science fiction, and certainly the first by a woman." But she wrote about much more, including the philosophical theory of atomism, which she eventually repudiated; the workings of microscopes; cross-dressing; and lesbianism. Peacock doesn't ignore her subject's contradictions--Cavendish thought marriage "conjured up images of bondage and manacles," yet stayed wedded to William Cavendish until her death at 50--but the result is an appreciative biography of a complex woman who merits wider recognition. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer