In addition to The Blazing World, this volume includes Cavendish’s brief autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life (1667), her play The Convent of Pleasure, and selections from her Sociable Letters, her poetry, and her critical writings. A variety of background documents by other seventeenth-century writers helps to set her work in context for the modern reader.
Sylvia Bowerbank holds a joint apointment in the Arts and Science Programme and the English Department at McMaster University.
Sara Mendelson is a historian who teaches in the Arts and Science Programme at McMaster University.