Description: "Reassesses the literary invention of Margaret Cavendish -- the use she makes of other writers, her own various forms of writing, and the ways in which she creates her own literary persona -- to transform our understanding of Cavendish's considerable accomplishments and influence, including her revival of an expansive model of literary invention"--
Brief description: Lara Dodds is associate professor and graduate studies coordinator in the Department of English at Mississippi State University, where she has taught since 2004. Her scholarship on Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, and other early modern subjects has appeared in English Literary Renaissance, John Donne Journal, Milton Studies, Restoration, and elsewhere.
Review Quotes: Margaret Cavendish asserted that she read no English books, but Lara Dodds s exploration of Cavendish s engagement with her English literary predecessors comprehensively disproves that and shows that Cavendish read, in Dodds s words, widely, if not deeply. . . . [T]his is a sophisticated, nuanced, and finely written book, and Dodds reads her chosen texts attentively and illuminatingly. Seventeeth-Century News"