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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