The Blazing World and Other Writings

This is a collection of three stories written by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle in the 17th century. The Contract and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity are romances which play out the empowering possibilities of disguise or masking for women. The centrepiece of this collection is The Blazing World, the only known Utopian fiction by a seventeenth century woman writer, an inventive and extravagant portrayal of the rise of a woman to absolute power.