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There's a vile sickness in Abbas town.

You must excise it.

Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky,

this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jule State and Ray Wise.

Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The first published volume of work from Margaret Cavendish, Poems and Fancies in 1653,

introduced readers to an author who didn't settle for one subject or style. The volume features poems about atoms,

arguments for the existence of fairies, and conversations between man and nature. Amongst these

varied pieces, one can also find a short essay titled To All Writing Ladies. In that essay, Cavendish

argues that history is composed of ages defined by men's changing desires. There are ages of peace,

ages of war, ages of many gods, ages of atheism, ages of learning, ages of ignorance. Throughout these ages, Margaret explains, there are times when women rise to prominence, whether they be heroines, prophets, rulers, or scholars. For brief periods of time, then,

women, she argues, can define an era. And if it be an age when the effeminate spirits rule,

Cavendish writes, let us take the advantage and make the best of our time, for fear their reign should not last long.

To that same effect, Cavendish writes,

Let us strive to build us tombs while we live, followed by a couplet, that though our bodies

die, our names may live to after memory.

1653's Poems and Fancy's would be the first of many tombs, Margaret built herself while she was living.

If you recall the ending of our last episode, readers of poems were met with a title page loudly declaring

that the book was written by the right honorable the Lady Margaret Countess of Newcastle.

Some editions even featured a bold etching of Margaret as a classical statue standing in between Apollo and Athena.

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