Cavendish was an unorthodox and daring intellectual who received positive and negative commentary from her contemporaries. Negative comments can be found by the Royal Society member Samuel Pepys who once wrote of her as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" though he was eager to read her work.[44] Dorothy Osborne reflected in one published letter, after reading a book by the Duchess, that she was "sure there are soberer people in Bedlam."[45] She also had numerous admirers, Constantijn Huygens, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, John Dryden, Kenelm Digby, Henry More were among them. Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton corresponded with her and engaged with philosophy and science.[46] After her death, her husband William Cavendish compiled a book of admiring letters, poems, and epitaphs by numerous people.[47] In the nineteenth century Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters[48] and so much admired her biography of her husband that he called it a jewel "for which no casket is rich enough."[49] James Fitzmaurice argues “Cavendish was viewed sympathetically by the English Romantic poets”.[50]
Margaret Cavendish was the first person to develop an original theory of atomism in Britain.[51] She was also the first woman to be invited to attend a session of the Royal Society.[52] One member, John Evelyn, saw in Cavendish "a mighty pretender to learning, poetry, and philosophy".[53] Yet her knowledge was recognised by some, such as the protofeminist Bathsua Makin: "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men." She saw her exemplifying what women could become through education.[54] New manuscript evidence also suggests she was read and taken seriously by at least some early Royal Society members, such as its secretary, Nehemiah Grew.[55]
Cavendish was mostly lost to obscurity in the early twentieth century. Not until Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader (1925) did discourse rediscover the Duchess. Woolf remarked that:
the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her intelligence so active.[56]
Margaret Cavendish began to generate intense scholarly interest in the 1980s, when rediscovered and analysed from a modern feminist perspective. Since then there have been many book-length critical studies of her. She has also gained fame as one of the first science-fiction writers, with her novel The Blazing World.[57] Her self inserted as a character named Margaret Cavendish in The Blazing World is said to be among the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope.[58] More recently, her plays have been examined in performance studies, for blurring the lines between performance and literature, challenging gender identities and upsetting gender norms.[59] Further analysis on Cavendish appears here.
This new interest has engendered media projects. The film, The Blazing World (2021) is loosely inspired by Cavendish's science fiction story. Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World (2014), which was also loosely inspired by Cavendish, won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was long listed for the Booker Prize. Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton dramatises her "with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time", as a new approach to "imagining the life of a historical woman".[60]] As the digital humanities grow, several projects have begun archiving Cavendish. The International Margaret Cavendish Society was set up as "a means of communication between scholars worldwide", to increase awareness of Cavendish's scholarly presence as a hub for newsletters, contacts and links to Cavendish's works.[61] Likewise the Digital Cavendish Project works to make Cavendish's writing accessible and readable for people across the web and "highlight digital research, image archives, scholarly projects, and teaching materials".[62] On 26 January 2018, the Digital Cavendish Twitter account announced that its next goal was to compile the Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish.[63]
