Cavendish, Margaret: - Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was a 17th century trailblazer for women and authors. She was an English aristocrat, philosopher, scientist, author, poet, and playwright. Though they are male-dominated fields, Cavendish was not shy about her studies in philosophy and science, and she expressed her views and findings on each topic within her written work. While Cavendish wrote in a time that discouraged women from doing so, she always published under her name rather than anonymously. Cavendish tackled many themes and topics with her work, including gender, sexuality, power, science, philosophy, and advocacy for animals. Her work The Blazing World is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the science fiction genre.