'This is a remarkable book, both for its contents and because it is a new species of biography...Linda Colley has written a full-blown economic romance with an extraordinary range...bringing all the resources of her skills as a historian
and researcher to her story. It is a major achievement and an enthralling narrative'. The Guardian
‘Compelling...exhilarating...as a work of big history illustrated with brilliant minatures it is a triumph.’ Sunday Times
‘A fascinating and compulsively readable book, written with great elegance and insight...Elizabeth's wanderings across the mid–eighteenth century world are evoked with a wonderful eye...marvellous detail and fine definition...a vivid depiction of an extraordinary life that touched multiple aspects of the British encounter with the non-Western world.’ TLS
'Stimulating and impressive...this is a remarkable life.' Financial Times
‘A minor miracle of biographical reconstruction...a fine historian.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Fascinating...brilliant...important.’ The Independent
‘Exceptional...Colley humanises history and alters our idea of biograph.’ Sunday Telegraph
'Immensely detailed but immaculately organised...her book is a work of skewering historical precision and vast imaginative reach...Colley's style of irreproachable clarity makes light work of the global complexities of her story. Her synthesis of the facts is masterly...her book is both moving and profound.' Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books
‘A rather remarkable piece of archival detective work.’ The Spectator
'A fascinating read...there is nothing unremarkable about this woman, or about her colourful story in Linda Colley's quite superb biography.' The Scotsman
'A remarkable book mixing brilliant archival sleuthing, an intriguing narrative, perceptive analysis and fine descriptive prose...it is a remarkable story and the imaginative and original mode of telling it shows again that Colley is not only one of the most remarkable historians at work today, but also one of our most interesting writers of non-fiction in any category.' New Statesman
'Colley's thrillingly new take on world history, the depth of her research and the originality of her analysis of the source material combine to reveal the life of Elizabeth Marsh in ways of which Marsh herself could never have dreamed.' Daily Telegraph
'The many levels of this engrossing biography brilliantly interconnect Elizabeth's story, her family and their lives with a developing world.' The Times
'Linda Colley has mined the diaries of relatives to pull together a compelling portrait that sets her heroine against the rise of the British empire...breathtaking...Ms. Colley allows the reader to vault the pioneering life of an obscure woman into a grander tale of physical hardiness and surprising moral choices.' The Economist
