Born in Essex in 1623, she became a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, marrying William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle in 1644. An ardent royalist, the Duke was forced into exile after the unfortunate shortening of King Charles I. On the restoration of the monarchy, Margaret returned to England and it was there that she began to publish for the first time.

She did not just restrict herself to bad verse; no, she wrote bad plays, bad prose and even bad philosophy. Although unhampered by the trappings of an education, she was much given to scientific speculation and concocted several intriguing theories, including one which claimed that some people lived longer because their atoms were packed closer together.

She was a true eccentric, given to acts of personal excess and sporting a dress-sense that caused crowds to gather wherever she appeared. Her poetry was often dictated to servants in the middle of the night - which might explain why so much of it was about food. She was obviously peckish and it is a sobering thought that if she'd had a fridge in her room we might have been spared such gems as Posset for Nature's Breakfast which begins with the immortal line:

Here is one of her least tasteful efforts, a poem which likens death to cooking;

Nature's Cook

Death is the cook of Nature; and we find
Meat dressed several ways to please her mind.
Some meats she roasts with fevers, burning hot,
And some she boils with dropsies in a pot.
Some for jelly consuming by degrees,
And some with ulcers, gravy out to squeeze.
Some flesh as sage she stuffs with gouts, and pains,
Others for tender meat hangs up in chains.
Some in the sea she pickles up to keep,
Others, as brawn is soused, those in wine steep.
Some with the pox, chops flesh, and bones so small,
Of which she makes a French fricasse withal.
Some on gridirons of calentures is broiled,
And some is trodden on, and so quite spoiled.
But those are baked, when smothered they do die,
By hectic fevers some meat she doth fry.
In sweat sometimes she stews with savoury smell,
A hodge-podge of diseases tasteth well.
Brains dressed with apoplexy to Nature's wish,
Or swims with sauce of megrims in a dish.
And tongues she dries with smoke from stomachs ill,
Which as the second course she sends up still.
Then Death cuts throats, for blood-puddings to make,
And puts them in the guts, which colics rack.
Some hunted are by Death, for deer that's red.
Or stall-fed oxen, knocked on the head.
Some for bacon by Death are singed, or scalt,
Then powdered up with phlegm, and rheum that's salt.