ABSTRACT
After the restoration of monarchy, in 1664, Margaret Cavendish's Sociable Letters and Philosophical Letters were published. These two volumes of familiar letters represent a timely return to a significant political genre of the Civil War and Interregnum by an established and prolific royalist author. The philosophical letters underscore the serious political and intellectual implications. The impact of this generic indecorum suggests that knowledge of the precepts of good letter-writing was widespread in the mid-seventeenth century. Since the late 1640s the royalist press had satirised Marten's sexual conduct to discredit his politics. Royalist marriage is an important ideal in the civic vision Cavendish presents in Sociable Letters is her focus. While Cavendish presents herself as exemplary, her singularity is anchored to sociable feminine community represented by epistolary dialogue. Cavendish's return at the Restoration to a sociable form of imaginative writing and a philosophy derived from and addressed to social conditions was also a return to the raging pre-Civil-War debates about liberty.
