I have always been fascinated by women's history, especially since women's lives were rarely documented and much of what they did went unnoted by traditional historians. For that reason, I found Linda Colley's book The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh to be an excellent glimpse into the life of a woman who lived during one of the most exciting periods in world history.
Elizabeth Marsh was born in Jamaica in 1735, and although she was English and spent many quiet years living in the shipyards of the Royal Navy, she also found herself in situations that reflected the events taking place in the world around her. She met a wide variety of people who shaped her own thinking. She was held captive by a sultan in Morocco and narrowly escaped becoming part of his harem. As the wife of a naval officer, she experienced firsthand the slave trade as well as the other forms of trade carried out by the British East India Company. Elizabeth wrote a book about her experiences in Morocco (one of the first books about this country to be written in English), and went on to explore parts of India as well. She even participated in land speculation in Florida and was affected by the events of the French and Indian War in the new colonies of America.
What makes this biography unusual is the fact that not only are we exploring the life of a woman who lived during extraordinary times, but her life is set against detailed explanations of these larger events. While this helps to accentuate the times and places Elizabeth experienced, it does make the book a little harder to read because there is so much detail. This isn't a book to be breezed through in a few sittings, but rather read carefully and slowly to fully understand and appreciate all the global events and issues that played such a big part in her life.
Elizabeth Marsh died of breast cancer in 1785, but through this book and Colley's extensive and detailed research, she lives on. The book provides an amazing window into a world that was rapidly changing and shrinking and a woman who was nearly at the center of it all. It is definitely worth reading.
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