As far as nicknames go, the moniker “Mad Madge” would not suggest that Margaret Cavendish enjoyed the full respect of her peers. A poet, philosopher, scientist, playwright and fiction writer, the 17th-century duchess had a multitude of disciplines and was published under her own name in a period when women writers were either anonymous or ignored.
But Cavendish’s work at the time, while widely discussed, was often dismissed, particularly by fellow scientists, explained Sarah Connell, associate director of the NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science. “She was certainly visible in a way that a lot of her contemporaries were not,” said Connell, “but it was often with this sort of disparagement, this sense that she was not worth taking seriously.”
A reappraisal has long since been underway of Cavendish’s achievements, and a project by Northeastern University has looked to take that further by analyzing her impact on the scientific community of her day.
