The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described.

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. It has been described as an early forerunner of science fiction.

The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner ofScience Fiction-General. It can also be read as a utopian work

Named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year ** Publishers Weekly’s Best Fiction Books of 2014 ** NPR Best Books of 2014 ** Kirkus Reviews Best Literary Fiction Books of 2014 ** Washington Post Top 50 Fiction Books of 2014 ** Boston Globe’s Best Fiction of 2014 ** The Telegraph’s Best Fiction to Read 2014 ** St. Louis Post Dispatch’s Best Books of 2014 ** The Independent Fiction Books of the Year 2014 ** One of Buzzfeed’s Best Books Written by Women in 2014 ** San Francisco Chronicle’s Best of 2014 ** A Nancy Pearl Pick ** PopMatters.com’s Best of 2014 Fiction Winner of the 2014 LA Times Book Prize for Fiction Finalist for the 2014 Kirkus Prize Hailed by The Washington Post as “Siri Hustvedt’s best novel yet, an electrifying work,” The Blazing World is a masterful novel about perception, prejudice, desire, and one woman’s struggle to be seen. In a new novel called “searingly fresh... A Nabokovian cat’s cradle” on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, the internationally bestselling author tells the provocative story of artist Harriet Burden, who, after years of having her work ignored, ignites an explosive scandal in New York’s art world when she recruits three young men to present her creations as their own. Yet when the shows succeed and Burden steps forward for her triumphant reveal, she is betrayed by the third man, Rune. Many critics side with him, and Burden and Rune find themselves in a charged and dangerous game, one that ends in his bizarre death. An intricately conceived, diabolical puzzle presented as a collection of texts, including Harriet’s journals, assembled after her death, this “glorious mashup of storytelling and scholarship” (San Francisco Chronicle) unfolds from multiple perspectives as Harriet’s critics, fans, family, and others offer their own conflicting opinions of where the truth lies. Writing in Slate, Katie Roiphe declared it “a spectacularly good read...feminism in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: richly complex, densely psychological, dazzlingly nuanced.” “Astonishing, harrowing, and utterly, completely engrossing” (NPR), Hustvedt’s new novel is “Blazing indeed:...with agonizing compassion for all of wounded humanity”(Kirkus Reviews, starred review). It is a masterpiece that will be remembered for years to come.

New World, Called the Blazing World, self-published by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, in 1666 "is the first science-fiction novel to have been written and published by a woman," As its full title suggests, Blazing World is a fanciful depiction of a satirical, utopian kingdom in another world (with different stars in the sky) that can be reached via the North Pole. It is "the only known work of utopian fiction by a woman in the 17th century, as well as an example of what we now call 'proto-science fiction' -- although it is also a romance, an adventure story, and even autobiography."

She answered, that if his Senses or his Person did betray her to his Lust, she wished them all annihilated, or at least buried in Dust: but I hope, said she, by your noble and civil usage, you will give me cause to pray for you, and not to wish you Evil; for why should you rob me of that which Nature freely gave? and it is an Injustice to take the Goods from the right Owners without their consents; and an Injustice is an Act that all Noble Minds hate; and all Noble Minds usually dwell in Honourable Persons, such as you seem to be; and none but base or cruel Tyrants will lay unreasonable Commands, or require wicked Demands to the powerlesse, or vertuous.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was an English aristocrat, a prolific writer, and a scientist. Her writing addressed a number of topics, including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy. Her utopian romance, The Blazing World, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She is singular in having published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science. She published over a dozen original works; inclusion of her revised works brings her total number of publications to twenty one.

The story begins when a beautiful, unnamed maiden is kidnapped by a love-stricken merchant and his men. She is seized from the shore of her homeland and carried out to sea. While they are sailing, a tempest forces the boat to move towards the North Pole, and as the tempest rages on, she is saved "by Providence" and separated from her captors. The merchant's boat floats off into the Atlantic Ocean and the men freeze to death as the maiden, in a lifeboat, drifts into another world that is attached to Earth via the North Pole.She passes through the pole to discover an icy, strange world in which different suns gloriously shine; the new, strange, and wonderful qualities of the blazing light emanate from these stars to create an alternative space and time. The maiden has entered a new kingdom, called Blazing World.While in this new world, the maiden is enthroned as Empress of an extremely diverse society. The society of Blazing World is comprised of all different sorts of unrecognizable men: bird-men, fish-men, bear-men, mermen, lice-men, creatures of green, black, tawny, and even purple complexions. The Empress proceeds to assign each of the different types of men different occupations and obligations. The bird-men then become astronomers, the bear-men experimental philosophers, the spider-men as mathematicians, ape-men as chemists, and worm-, fish-, and fly-men as natural philosophers.She uses her power to ensure that her newly endowed land is free of war, religious diversion, and unfair sexual discrimination.