Reaching beyond the myth behind scandalous 'Mad Madge'
Fiction, Margaret the First, Danielle Dutton, Scribe, hdbk, 176 pages, €18.19
'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".
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