Margaret Cavendish has recently become the subject of intense academic interest among scholars from a wide range of disciplines. In addition, she is increasingly becoming visible in popular culture. In the Introduction of this collection, Brandie R. Siegfried and Lisa Walters explore Cavendish’s influence upon Western philosophy, science, literature and women’s rights. The Introduction also provides contextual information about Cavendish’s life and works and her importance in early modern literary culture as well as the scientific revolution. Indeed, Cavendish is an important figure for understanding the seventeenth century’s collective efforts at advancing knowledge, particularly in philosophy. However, no other natural philosopher of the early modern era developed the sheer breadth of literary versatility and inventiveness peculiar to Cavendish, who explored her philosophy and science in poetry, romance, orations, fictional letters, science fiction, and drama. Hence, this chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding of Cavendish’s diverse and wide-ranging body of thought by situating her ideas within a multidisciplinary conversation among scholars.

In this work, Aemilia Lanyer, the first English woman author to publish a full edition of poems and claim a professional poetic voice, makes powerful assertions on behalf of early modern women through the voice of Pilate’s wife. Defending Eve by way of contrast to the “greater” sin of man in crucifying Christ, Pilate’s wife argues, astoundingly, for women’s right to be the “equals” of men, “free from tyranny.” Lanyer was only one of numerous women authors who wrote and found audiences in the English Renaissance. And yet, for all their bold and assertive voices, most early modern women authors remain relatively unknown to the twenty-first-century public, represented mostly in partial or fragmented view, their shaping contributions as world-makers disregarded, distorted, or erased.

South Asia, a region that has been defined variously to include all or parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and occasionally Myanmar and the Tibet Autonomous Region, is home to about a quarter of the world’s population and is the scene of much of its linguistic diversity. Each of these nations has adopted a different set of official languages. Some have enshrined multilingualism at the national or provincial levels, while others have chosen a single language to serve as an official national language. Sri Lanka, for example, amended its constitution in 1987 to name both Sinhalese and Tamil as official and national languages, with English retained as a ‘link language’, and the 8th Schedule to the Indian Constitution currently designates twenty-two official languages, with an official ‘three-language formula’ implemented in 1968 by India’s Ministry of Education.