Maureen E. Mulvihill: New Work on Margaret Cavandish

Old Books / New Editions. Part III of III. New Work on Margaret Cavendish’s “The Blazing World” (1666; 2016)

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Welcome to this third and final installment in my Guest Series on new editions of 17th-century women writers. This last essay discusses an extraordinary figure whose writings are a rich weave of interests, from feminism, politics, and education, to astronomy, astrology, and cosmography. This is none other than the remarkable Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (c1623-1673), a writer of many qualities who took English literature to a whole new level. She owned a telescope. She collected optical lenses. She designed her own haut coutoure. Her visit to the new London Royal Society in 1667 was a sensation. Confident in her abilities and certain of “a glorious Fame”, she published under her own name and her record of publication (plays, poetry, essays, letters, prose fiction, autobiography) was substantial. She described her manuscripts as “paper Bodies”, living things creating “a great Blazing Light” after her death. (An expanding cohort of advocates would say: Yea, she was right!) Her masterpiece and signature work is an astonishing futuristic text, The Blazing-World (London, 1666, 1668), considered the first-ever science fiction novel written and published by a woman writer. It is now available in a new edition for 21st-century readers, prepared by Sara H. Mendelson, a respected scholar on Cavendish and a former president of the Margaret Cavendish Society. Fasten your seatbelts, Duchess Margaret will take you right out of this world. < Click here for essay

The Butterfly Effect

This is my first creative non-fiction story. It was published in the multi-media magazine Mad Hatters’ Review (Issue 13, May 2012; homepage). The Butterfly Effect was a designated “Notable Story” by storySouth Million Writers Award.

Click on the magazine cover to hear/read my story. (The printed version is updated from the earlier read version.) Elsewhere in the issue is my music Mouth Parts, performed in Paris by Trio Rare < here >

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Fiction Catalog

I have assembled an Excel spreadsheet of all my fiction writings from my first effort in June 2012 to December 2016. The catalog gives the title, date of publication, type of story, genre, publisher, word count and URL for on-line publications. The URLs are not “hot” and will have to be copied and pasted in your browser.

In four and half years, I have published 430,019 words which includes 2 novels, a novella, 29 short stories, 36 flash fictions, 3 micro fictions, an elegy and a poem.

The links to Five Million YenThe Nude Pianist, and The Judge’s Wife (retitled RASH) are to the current versions. They were all serialized on Fictionaut.

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