Mariana Starke (1761/2–1838) was an English author. She is best known for her travel guide to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

which served as a popular companion for British travellers to the Continent in the early nineteenth century. She also wrote plays and poetry early in her career but was discouraged by harsh reviews. She was unmarried but sometimes referred to as Mrs. Starke, as was common at the time.

Life and writing career

Starke's mother was Mary (née Hughes) and her father was Richard Starke, governor of

Fort St George Fort St. George (or historically, White Town) is a fortress in the coastal city of Chennai, India. Founded in 1639, it was the first English (later British) fortress in India. The construction of the fort provided the impetus for further s ...

in Madras (now known as

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

). Starke grew up in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and used that country as a background for her plays ''The Sword of Peace'' and ''The Widow of Malabar''. Starke subsequently lived in Italy for an extended period, between 1792 and 1798, to attend a sick relation, and this experience formed the basis for her later writing. After the end of the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

, Starke returned to Italy and devoted the rest of her life to continual revisions of her travel series, effectively reinventing the genre.Mullen, Richard and Munson, James ''The Smell of the Continent: The British Discover Europe''. London: Macmillan, 2009. pp. 143–149. Earlier travel guides traditionally concentrated on architectural and scenic descriptions of the places to be visited by wealthy young men on the

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tuto ...

. Starke recognised that with the enormous growth in the number of Britons travelling abroad after 1815, the majority of her readers would now be travelling in family groups and often on a budget. She therefore included for the first time a wealth of advice on luggage, obtaining passports, the precise cost of food and accommodation in each city, and even advice on the care of invalid family members. She also devised a system of exclamation mark !!ratings, a forerunner of today's

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

classifications. Her books, published by John Murray, served as a template for later guides. Her work earned her celebrity status in her lifetime. The French author

Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' (''The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de P ...

, in his 1839 novel ''

The Charterhouse of Parma ''The Charterhouse of Parma'' (french: La Chartreuse de Parme, links=no) is a novel by Stendhal published in 1839. Telling the story of an Italian nobleman in the Napoleonic era and later, it was admired by Honoré de Balzac, Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, ...

'', refers to a travelling British historian who "never paid for the smallest trifle without first looking up its price in the Travels of a certain Mrs Starke, a book which...indicates to the prudent Englishman the cost of a turkey, an apple, a glass of milk and so forth".

Works

Plays

* ''The British Orphan'' (unpublished; produced privately in 1791) * ''The Sword of Peace; or, a Voyage of Love'' (produced in London in 1788
Etext
* ''The Widow of Malabar. A tragedy in three acts'' (adaptation from ''La Veuve de Malabar'' by Le Mierre; produced in London in 1790) * ''The Tournament, a tragedy; imitated from the celebrated German drama, entitled Agnes Bernauer'' (produced in 1800)

Poetry

* ''The Poor Soldier; an American tale: founded on a recent fact.'' Attributed; two editions: London: Printed for J. Walter, 1789 * ''The Beauties of Carlo Maria Maggi, paraphrased: to which are added Sonnets, by Mariana Starke'' Exeter: Printed for the author, by S. Woolmer ... and sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, London ; by Upham, and also by Barratt, Bath, 1811

Travel writing

* ''Letters from Italy, between the years 1792 and 1798 containing a view of the Revolutions in that country'' (2 vols. London, 1800) **
v.2
* ''Travels on the Continent: written for the use and particular information of travellers'' (1820) * * ''Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent'' (1824; a new version of the 1820 ''Travellers''; expanded and republished as ''Travels in Europe for the use of Travellers on the Continent and likewise in the Island of Sicily, to which is added an account of the Remains of Ancient Italy'' in 1832) (658 p; 2 maps) **Various translations of the above and pirated editions; last edition issued was in 1839 **
Index

References

* Baigent, Elizabeth (2007).
Starke, Mariana (1761/2 – 1838)
" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 6 January 2007 * -- - (1990) "Starke, Mariana, 1762?–1838." ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English''. Virginia Blain et al., eds. New Haven and London: Yale University Press; p. 1023

External links

* O'Quinn, Daniel J.
The Long Minuet as Danced at Coromandel: Character and the Colonial Translation of Class Anxiety in Mariana Starke's ''The Sword of Peace''
" British Women Playwrights around 1800. 1 September 2000. 27 pars. * Purinton, Marjean.

" British Women Playwrights around 1800. 1 September 2000. 13 pars. * Robinson, Terry F.
Mariana Starke.
The Literary Encyclopedia. 29 January 2008. * Starke, Mariana.

'. Eds. Thomas C. Crochunis and Michael Eberle-Sinatra, with a

by Jeanne Moskal and

by Jeffrey N. Cox. British Women Playwrights around 1800. 15 August 1999. {{DEFAULTSORT:Starke, Mariana English dramatists and playwrights British women dramatists and playwrights English women non-fiction writers 18th-century British women writers 18th-century British writers 19th-century English women writers 19th-century British writers British women travel writers 1762 births 1838 deaths English travel writers 18th-century English women 18th-century English people