She begins to write, publishing her work in secret. Margaret describes life in exile with her new husband and the numerous doctor visits she endured in their attempt to conceive. He begins to court her and they eventually marry she becomes his second wife. During her time as a lady, she meets marquess William Cavendish. Margaret later becomes a lady to Queen Henrietta Maria. She describes her childhood and how she was very different from her siblings growing up. It later switches to Margaret's point-of-view. The book begins with a third person narration of Margaret Lucas's life. Based on the historical figure of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Dutton weaves an imaginative story about the duchess's extraordinary life. There wasn’t a great deal of interaction on Facebook and Twitter about the book club anyway (sadly! The Tudor book clubs are so much more active) so perhaps we’ll leave it at that.Margaret the First is a fictional, historical biography written by Danielle Dutton, first published in 2016 by Catapult then by Scribe Publications later that year. This book was my pick for the Stuart-Era Book Club, but I just ran out of time, so I apologise for this. Pardoning that brief pedanticism, I enjoyed the rest even though it did take me an unconscionably long two years to read it! Oddly enough, even though I read it in bits and pieces, I still remembered it well, which is a testament to the author’s talent, I think. OK, but Catherine of Braganza was Portuguese and had Portuguese ladies, not Spanish ladies. Margaret is stewarded to the queen’s reception rooms, where Queen Catherine sits surrounded by her Spanish ladies and several snoring hounds. I read it in ebook form and I rather think I ought to have read it in hardcopy form as I believe it probably would have been more suited to that form.ĭutton clearly did some research for this book, but I was a little disappointed with one tiny detail which leapt out at me: I found the book to be a quirky, stream-of-consciousness kind of experience, which is very appropriate (in my opinion) for someone like Margaret.

No wonder such a figure ignited the imagination of author Danielle Dutton in her work, Margaret the First.

She was a philosopher, the author of The Blazing World, and was the first woman to attend a Royal Society meeting. Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623–1673) was one of the most interesting women of the Stuart era.

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton