THE PLAYERS > Margaret Cavendish

First Published: March 2004
Revised (substantive): 7 July 2025

Composite illustration casting Margaret Cavendish as MAD MADGE. Portrait of Margaret Cavendish, engraved by Peter van Schuppen after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, ca. 1655, is juxtaposed with a graphic presentation of quote from a May 1691 issue of _The Athenian Mercury_ (an influential journal of popular science), which makes an oblique reference to Mad Madge.

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Margaret Cavendish in THE PLAYERS section

[ “Rethinking ‘Mad Madge’” ]

[ Click/tap here to open a second-window aside with complete text of the Athenian Mercury quote — which includes the first printed reference to “mad Madge of Newcastle.” ]

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Ornamental thistle (associated with the heraldic emblem of Scotland in the 17th century)

This Web page was last modified on: 07/07/2025 11:11 PM.

This work
Margaret Cavendish - “Mad Madge” | landing page for THE PLAYERS section
(plus ancillary content) by Deborah Taylor-Pearce is licensed under a Free Culture (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.