Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) was a prolific author of poetry, prose fiction, letters, essays, natural philosophy, and plays. As a young woman, Cavendish was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria. During the English Civil War, she accompanied the Queen to Paris where she married the prominent royalist general William Cavendish, the Duke of Newcastle with whom she lived in exile until the Restoration of Charles II. Cavendish sought fame through her writing and used the medium of print to comment on the most pressing cultural, political, and philosophical issues of her day.