The Blazing World

"The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World", better known as "The Blazing World", is a 1666 work of prose fiction by English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle.

As its full title suggests, "Blazing World" is a fanciful depiction of a utopian kingdom in another world (with different stars in the sky) that can be reached via the North Pole.

A young woman from our world enters this other world, becomes the empress of a society composed of various species of talking animals, and organizes an invasion back into our world complete with submarines towed by the "fish men" and the dropping of "fire stones" by the "bird men" to confound the enemies of her homeland (apparently England).

The work, which many credit as one of the earliest examples of science fiction, was republished in 1668 with Cavendish's "Observations upon Experimental Philosophy" and thus functioned as an imaginative component to what was otherwise a reasoned endeavour in 17th century science.

Cavendish's book inspired a notable sonnet by her husband, William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which celebrates her imaginative powers. The sonnet was included in her book.

Influence

In Alan Moore's graphic novels "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", the Blazing World was, in the late 1680s, the destination of Prospero's Men, until that group disbanded in 1690.

Resources

*"The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World" is available on [http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/eebo/Featured/cavendish.html EEBO] (Early English Books Online, a licensed database)
*"Paper Bodies: a Margaret Cavendish reader". Ed. Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2000. ISBN 1-55111-173-X