Book contents
- Margaret Cavendish
- Margaret Cavendish
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- In Memoriam
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I History of Science
- Part II Philosophy
- Part III Literature
- Part IV Politics
- Part V New Directions
- Chapter Fifteen Close Reading (and) Textual Bibliography
- Chapter Sixteen Companions, Competitors, Contexts
- Chapter Seventeen Cavendish Studies and the Digital Turn
- Afterword
- Chronology of Works by Margaret Cavendish
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Fifteen - Close Reading (and) Textual Bibliography
How Many Parts Does Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World Have?
from Part V - New Directions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2022
- Margaret Cavendish
- Margaret Cavendish
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- In Memoriam
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I History of Science
- Part II Philosophy
- Part III Literature
- Part IV Politics
- Part V New Directions
- Chapter Fifteen Close Reading (and) Textual Bibliography
- Chapter Sixteen Companions, Competitors, Contexts
- Chapter Seventeen Cavendish Studies and the Digital Turn
- Afterword
- Chronology of Works by Margaret Cavendish
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines what is arguably Cavendish’s most famous publication, her proto-science fiction novel The Blazing World, from a textual bibliographical perspective, for the purpose of showing that textual bibliography and more traditional literary interpretive analysis can and should be brought together in Cavendish studies. The printed volume in which Cavendish’s novel was originally published, the 1666 collection, printed in London, includes both a treatise and the novel together. I establish a collation formula for this book, and examine the binding, signature marks, pagination, running titles, and systematic hand corrections. These textual bibliographical details demonstrate that the original intention was for Blazing World to end with what we now call Part I, and that Part II was hastily sent to the printer after Part I and the Epilogue had already been printed as a completed whole. The essay ends by showing how this bibliographical fact might change our reading of the narrative itself, and might also prompt us to ask new questions of Cavendish’s writing methods.
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- Margaret CavendishAn Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 233 - 247Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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