Margaret the First Is Danielle Dutton’s Ode to Female Literary Ambition

by Megan Burbank
"I am not Covetous,” wrote Duchess of Newcastle Margaret Cavendish in her 1668 book The Blazing World, “but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which is the cause, That though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second; yet, I will endeavour to be, Margaret the First.”
Danielle Dutton takes the title for her new novel, Margaret the First, from this declaration, indicative as it is of author’s ambition. Cavendish wasn’t fuc