The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World

Margaret Cavendish wrote herself into immortality with this audacious fantasy, the first work of prose fiction published by a woman under her own name. In 1666, when women were barred from universities and most intellectual life, Cavendish imagined a world where a woman could not only rule but be worshipped for her wisdom. The story begins with a merchant so consumed by love for a noble lady that he resorts to abduction, a plot device that propels her across the sea toward a world no European had seen. Shipwrecked at the North Pole, she is rescued by bear-men and other fantastical beings who make her their empress. What follows is part adventure, part philosophical inquiry, part satire of the male scientists and philosophers Cavendish mocked. She commands armies of fish-men, converses with spirits, and returns to our world to claim her own happy ending. The prose can be digressive, the pacing uneven, but the sheer audacity of vision remains breathtaking. Cavendish was called mad, ridiculed, dismissed. Today she is recognized as an ancestor of science fiction and a defiant assertion that women's imaginations could build worlds.