Margaret the First
Danielle Dutton, 2016
Catapult
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936787357
Summary
Margaret the First dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess.
The eccentric Margaret wrote and published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays, and utopian science fiction at a time when “being a writer” was not an option open to women. As one of the Queen’s attendants and the daughter of prominent Royalists, she was exiled to France when King Charles I was overthrown.
As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret met and married William Cavendish, who encouraged her writing and her desire for a career. After the War, her work earned her both fame and infamy in England: at the dawn of daily newspapers, she was “Mad Madge,” an original tabloid celebrity.
Yet Margaret was also the first woman to be invited to the Royal Society of London—a mainstay of the Scientific Revolution—and the last for another two hundred years.
Margaret the First is very much a contemporary novel set in the past. Written with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time, it is a gorgeous and wholly new approach to imagining the life of a historical woman. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1975
• Where—Visalia, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz; M.F.A., School of the Art Institute of
Chicago; Ph.D., University of Denver
• Currently—lives in St. Louis, Missouri
Danielle Dutton, an American writer and publisher, was born in Visalia, California. She received her BA in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1997, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
During her time at Denver University, she served as the Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly, under editor Bin Ramke. For several years she taught courses in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
In 2011 she joined the MFA program in creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor.
Writing
Of her first book, Attempts at a Life, a collection of short lyrical narratives published in 2007 by Tarpaulin Sky Press, novelist Daniel Handler wrote in Entertainment Weekly: “Indescribably beautiful, also indescribable. In fact, I’m not quite sure what this book’s about, really. Read it; remind yourself that comprehending things all the time is really boring.”
Dutton's second book was the experimental novel S P R A W L, published by the LA-based art press Siglio. It was a finalist for the Believer Book Award in 2011. The editors of The Believer wrote: "Dutton’s sentences are as taut and controlled as her narrator’s mind, and a hint at what compels both ('I locate my body by grounding it against the bodies of others') betrays a fierce and feral searching. S P R A W L makes suburban landscapes thrilling again." In Bookforum, Leigh Newman wrote: "Sprawl in fact does not sprawl at all; rather, it radiates with control and fresh, strange reflection."
Margaret the First was published in 2016. About the 17th century Duchess of Cavendish, Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and called the book "a sensuous appreciation of the world and unconventional approach to fictionalized biography. Dutton’s boldness, striking prose, and skill at developing an idiosyncratic narrative should introduce her to the wider audience she deserves."
Dutton's fiction has appeared in magazines including Harper's, BOMB, Noon, Fence, Places: Design Observer, and in anthologies including A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years and I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women.
Publishing
After finishing her PhD, Dutton joined the staff of Dalkey Archive Press, first as managing editor and then as production manager and book designer. She designed covers for more than 100 books and was interviewed for her designs by Elle magazine.
In 2010, Dutton founded the indie press Dorothy, a publishing project. According the the press's website, Dorothy, is dedicated "to works of fiction, or near fiction, or about fiction, mostly by women." The press publishes two books per year. To date, it has published books by Renee Gladman, Barbara Comyns, Manuela Draeger (translated from the French by Brian Evenson), Suzanne Scanlon, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Amina Cain, Joanna Ruocco, and Nell Zink. Its work has garnered wide praise and reviews of its books in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Vice, New York Times, and Harper's.
In a 2014 article in the Chicago Tribune, critic Laura Pearson wrote: "Truthfully, we'd check out anything from Dorothy, a publishing project, so keen is editor Danielle Dutton's eye for weird, wonderful manuscripts—most of which happen to be by women. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
It is to Danielle Dutton’s credit that her novelistic take on the duchess never swells this celebrity into false intellectual brilliance. Instead, we encounter a prickly, shy, arrogant, imaginative, contradictory, curious, confused, melancholic, ambitious and restless heroine.... Dutton surprisingly and delightfully offers not just a remarkable duchess struggling in her duke’s world but also an intriguing dissection of an unusually bountiful partnership of (almost) equals.
Katharine Grant - New York Times Book Review
This vivid novel is a dramatization of the life of 17th-century Duchess Margaret Cavendish... While the novel takes place in the 1600s, the explorations of marriage, ambition, and feminist ideals are timeless.
Boston Globe (Pick of the Week)
Although Margaret the First is set in 17th century London, it's not a traditional work of historical fiction. It is an experimental novel that, like the works of Jeanette Winterson, draws on language and style to tell the story.... There is a restless ambition to [Danielle Dutton's] intellect.
Michele Filgate - Los Angeles Times
Danielle Dutton engagingly embellishes the life of Margaret the First, the infamous Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Vanity Fair
With refreshing and idiosyncratic style, Dutton portrays the inner turmoil and eccentric genius of an intellectual far ahead of her time.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com
(Starred review.) [R]remarkable...vividly imaginative as its subject, the 17th-century English writer and eccentric Margaret Cavendish.... Dutton’s boldness, striking prose, and skill at developing an idiosyncratic narrative should introduce her to the wider audience she deserves.
Publishers Weekly
A fabulous (and fabulist) re-imagining of the infamous Margaret Cavendish... Margaret the First isn’t a historical novel, however; magnificently weird and linguistically dazzling, it’s a book as much about how difficult and rewarding it is for an ambitious, independent, and gifted woman to build a life as an artist in any era as it is about Margaret herself. Incredibly smart, innovative, and refreshing, Margaret the First will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with forging her own path in the world.
BookRiot
Despite its period setting and details, this novel...feels rooted in the experiences of contemporary women with artistic and intellectual ambitions. Margaret's alternating bursts of inspiration and despair about her work may feel achingly familiar to...aspiring writers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Margaret the First...then ta:
1. How would you describe Margaret Cavendish? Talk about the trajectory of her life, from young Margaret Lucas, lady-in-waiting, to Lady Cavendish, and eventually back in England as Mad Madge. What drives her, always?
2. Author Danielle Dutton says she discovered Margaret through Virginia Woolf; indeed Woolf hovers over this book. If you haven't already, consider reading Woolf's A Room of One's Own and look for parallels between the two works—in language and imagery, as well as subject matter.
3. Talk about the traditional role of women in the 1600s and the ways in which Margaret eschews tradition.
4. Follow-up to Question 3: In what ways could Margaret be considered a 21st century woman? Consider, especially her drive for independence and creative expression. How does Margaret's story speak across the centuries to women of today?
5. In what way is Danielle Dutton's book not typical of historical fiction? Might the author's idiosyncratic style be a fitting manner in which to tell Margaret Cavendish's story?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use these, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)