Mad Madge: the Extraordinary Life o...

Mad Madge: the Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live through her Pen. Katie Whitaker. of recent origin York: Basic, 2002. 416 pp $3100

Audrey Bilger amazements at the sensational title of this biography that invokes the false nineteenth-century belief that Margaret Cavendish was mad, and also labels Cavendish the first woman to live from the pen, when in fact she did not support herself thus. Nevertheless, according to Bilger, Whitaker's