This project, excerpted from a larger multimodal project, The Virtual Sovereign, functions as both an innovative digital edition of Margaret Cavendish’s Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. To which is added The Description of a New Blazing World (1666) — not reproduced in its initial hybrid form by any contemporary publisher — as well as an experimental study of the primacy of mediated form in Cavendish’s work in conversation with the affordances of specific digital modalities.

This digital project is still in development. Its first articulation (Phase I) was on the academic publishing platform Scalar, but has since migrated to this WordPress environment for interface development (Phase II). Phase III will encompass a print-on-demand book with an annotated edition of the two texts.

Existing publications related to this larger project:

Boyle, Jen. “Mediating Sovereignty in Hobbes and Cavendish” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, special issue on “After Sovereignty” (58.1) (Winter, 2018). <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/687351/summary>

“Treading the Digital Turn,”Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, Issue on the“The Early Modern and the Digital” (University of Pennsylvania Press) (13.4: 2013). <https://www.jstor.org/stable/jearlmodcultstud.13.4.79?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>

Observations Upon a Blazing World: Margaret Cavendish and Mediated Form (with digital designer, Alli Crandell), digital edition and installation from The Virtual Sovereign <http://scalar.usc.edu/ works/observations-on-a-blazing-world/index>. Selected, Digital Salon Exhibit, SAA (Shakespeare Association of America), Vancouver, 2015; re-nominated, DigitalSalon, SAA (Shakespeare Association of America), New Orleans, 2016.

Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature: Mediation and Affect (Monograph, series, Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity; Aldershot and London: Ashgate Press, 2010). <https://www.routledge.com/Anamorphosis-in-Early-Modern-Literature-Mediation-and-Affect/Boyle/p/book/9781409400691>