My personal heroine is someone I’ll never meet, but I sure wish I’d had the chance. Mary Baker, a/k/a Mary Willcocks, was a working-class woman, born in the late eighteenth century, who was reborn in 1817 as “Caraboo,” the kidnapped princess of an undiscovered Asian island. I’ve been researching and writing about Mary/Caraboo for many years now. I first published an article about her (“The Caraboo Hoax: Romantic Woman as Mirror and Mirage”), in 1994, and followed that with a book chapter in Fictions and Fakes. I’m attaching a link to a podcast interview about Caraboo–an episode of the series “Criminal”–which aired a couple of years ago:

https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-185-the-princess-3-25-22/

Lately I’ve been trying to learn more about Mary’s later life, which included a successful career selling medical supplies (leeches!) to the Bristol Infirmary.

You might enjoy the film “Princess Caraboo” (1994), which starred Phoebe Cates in the title role. Here’s a link to the trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXBGg5sDRyQ