Memory and Material in Early Modern England

Material Memorials > Margaret Cavendish

Plays, never before printed, Written by the thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle. Portrait facing title page

Portrait of Cavendish from Plays, never before printed

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Margaret Cavendish’s vast writings discuss memory from a philosophical, literary, and political perspective. At the conclusion of her Philosophical Fancies, Cavendish imagines her burial along with “paper white” sheets, “cotton dyed with inke,” and “a garland” made of “fancies bound up with verse,” a moment that merges literary and material acts of memorialization. 

 

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