The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History @ richardeward.com

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
by Linda Colley
from Pantheon

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• for people who love history
  A great book -- I discovered it from my History Book Club, before the great reviews poured in from the critics. I think the New York Times had it as one of its ten best at the end of the year. For all persons interested in women's history, biography, India, Caribbean. Shows how much certain intrepid souls traveled in days of yore. And a rarity in those days--tales written by a woman. The author has done her research carefully & thoroughly; text is easy to follow, not boring. Loved the fact that she was... more info

• The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh
  This was one of the worst books I have ever read. It reads like a Ph.D. thesis - with some sentences being 2 and 3 lines long. There is nothing said by the heroine - just about her - and in a most tedious descriptive manner, often confusing (since her mother shared her name). Boring boring boring. I gave up after half of the book was finished. It was a Christmas gift to me and I will donate it to our local University - perhaps some student of history or genealogy would be interested. I am certainly not.

• Neither biography nor history but a curious speculation, of sorts
  
  Professor Colley has done a lot of research on Britain's 18th century world, and this book has come out of that. She presents an extraordinary interweaving of naval history, commerce, the status of women, slavery, and the emergence of the USA, among other subjects. I like the way she is upfront about her speculation about Elizabeth Marsh. As she goes along she makes it clear what is in the record, what she believes would have been typical of the era, and what she is only guessing at. Very admirable.... more info

• Who is Elizabeth Marsh?
  Elizabeth Marsh, daughter of a ship's carpenter, was conceived in Jamaica, was born in England in 1735, and died in Calcutta in 1785.
  Between these dates, Elizabeth Marsh travelled extensively lived a full (albeit unconventional) life and saw more of the world than most of her contemporaries.
  At twenty, as the sole female passenger aboard a merchant ship bound for Lisbon, she was captured by pirates and taken to Morocco. In order to escape, she pretended to be married to her sailing companion,... more info

Similar Products: