Pamela Norris
A World in A Life
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
By Linda Colley
HarperPress 400pp £20 order from our bookshop
In August 1769, a book named The Female Captive was published anonymously in London. It told the story of a young woman’s capture by Moroccan corsairs in the Mediterranean and her brief but dramatic encounter with the acting Sultan, Sidi Muhammad. The author of this memoir was Elizabeth Marsh, the subject of Linda Colley’s absorbing biography.
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Enjoying Susan Owens’s essay on English attitudes to nature in @Lit_Review. Turns out the early moderns were positively repulsed by hills, as described in this poem by Isaak Walton’s fishing chum Charles Cotton.
In this month's Silenced Voices, @lucyjpop shines a light on the tragic case of Shady Habash, a filmmaker who died in an Egyptian prison in May.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/shady-habash
One study found that hoarders 'had lesions on the mesial prefrontal cortex of their brains ... Collecting and hoarding, in other words, are the results of brain damage.'
James Delbourgo explores the psychology of minimalists & collectors.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/gardens-of-emptiness