Talk:Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2020 and 20 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kara Fennimore.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

New Organization?
The legacy structure of this page includes long textual summaries/subheads in some cases. I'm not sure the current structure works. Thoughts? DCavendish (talk)

First female Member of the Royal Society
Is it true that Margaret Cavendish was the first woman to join? (1667) --Nemissimo II 16:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No - she was invited to attend, but was not a member. DCavendish (talk) 16:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * She was actually quite opposed to the ideals of the Royal Society, as can be seen in The Blazing World. - Redmess (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

This Wikipedia article is in error when it claims ("Critical Reception," second paragraph) Cavendish became the first woman inducted into the Royal Society in 1945. The Guardian article cited as evidence doesn't say that either. The first female to be inducted into the Royal Society was admitted in 1945, but it was Kathleen Lonsdale, not the long-dead Cavendish. Whether Cavendish has ever been posthumously inducted or whether that's even a thing, I don't know.--2601:200:C000:10E0:ED13:F63F:FD88:37AF (talk) 03:01, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC) watever! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.23.161.130 (talk) 18:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This entry was largely done by an undergraduate class a number of years ago and can use some significant restructuring in addition to the addition of inline citations. DCavendish (talk) 17:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * And now, 10 years later, this entry still sits, unupdated. Cavendish was scandalous in her day and relished the attention.  This entry mentions none of that.  See Duchess of scandal | Gender | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/08/gender.uk 24.212.191.115 (talk) 02:07, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Lisa Jardine
Lisa Jardine tells a story in a BBC Radio 4 "Point of View" essay, about Cavendish in the context of spurious nationalism:
 * Prince Rupert's drops seem first to have attracted scientific interest in Germany in the 1640s. By the 1650s they were being examined and discussed in France and the Netherlands, with a whole range of theories being produced concerning the drop's strange properties. One of the earliest recorded attempts at an explanation involved the Dutch polymath Sir Constantijn Huygens and the amateur scientist Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
 * Cavendish was domiciled in Antwerp at the time, exiled from Britain during the Commonwealth period. In a letter to her following a visit, Huygens recorded a conversation they had about the drops - at the time known as "Dutch tears" - in her private chemistry laboratory. There, each week, she apparently "dirtied several white petticoats" worn as overalls to protect her clothing while she conducted experiments.

Perhaps Jardine or others have written about this? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:51, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Reorganization of this article
It seems like this article needs somewhat of a major overhaul in the sense of organization. It appears to have a lot of information, but not really anywhere to put all this info. For this article, I will be trying to help this by restructuring the article. Two main things I want to do is implement the sections:
 * full narrative history
 * major works

Within these, I want to shift the information around so that it is more structured(, like her religion can go in her full narrative/life section), since there is a lot of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kara Fennimore (talk • contribs) 16:29, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Birthday
This article contains two birthdays: December 15 (introduction) and December 16 (table). Which one is correct? 194.62.169.86 (talk) 19:11, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Should legacy and major contributions to society be at the top?
Her utopian romance The Blazing World is one of the earliest examples of science fiction.[3]

Shouldn't this be at the top? It's her legacy, and a major contribution to literature. 75.166.34.12 (talk) 14:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)