Reaching beyond the myth behind scandalous 'Mad Madge'

Fiction, Margaret the First, Danielle Dutton, Scribe, hdbk, 176 pages, €18.19

Zest: Margaret Cavendish with her husband William in 1650

Francesca Wade

'The whole story of this lady is a romance, and everything she does," wrote Samuel Pepys of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.

Earlier that day - intrigued by rumours of the scandalously garish outfits, the bare-breasted appearances in theatre boxes, the black stars that adorned her cheeks - Pepys had joined the crowds that thronged the streets when the duchess's carriage passed, desperate to glimpse the notorious eccentric known as "Mad Madge".