Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) is unique among women writers of the seventeenth century in the scale of her output and in her aspiration to create a philosophical system. This edition presents Cavendish as a political author, and Susan James includes two major texts, the Orations and The Blazing World, accompanied by the standard series features that enables students to gain a better understanding of one of the truly distinctive political voices of the early modern period.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) is unique among women writers of the seventeenth century in the scale of her output and in her aspiration to create a philosophical system. This edition presents Cavendish as a political author, and Susan James includes two major texts, the Orations and The Blazing World, accompanied by the standard series features that enables students to gain a better understanding of one of the truly distinctive political voices of the early modern period.

Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is simultaneously a work of philosophy and a piece of practical politics. It defends religious pluralism, a republican form of political organisation, and the freedom to philosophise, with a determination that is extremely rare in seventeenth-century thought. But it is also a fierce and polemical intervention in a series of Dutch disputes over issues about which Spinoza and his opponents cared very deeply.
Susan James makes the arguments of the Treatise accessible, and their motivations plain, by setting them in their historical and philosophical...