Mariana Starke (1762–1838)

Mariana Starke was born in Epsom, Surrey. Her father Richard Starke had worked for the British East India Company for 24 years before returning to England, where he married Mary Hughes. Their daughter Mariana grew up determined to become a writer. Her father's experiences in India provided the background that Mariana used in her plays The Sword of Peace (1788) and The Widow of Malabar (1791). From 1792 to 1798, Mariana lived in Italy, where she cared for an invalid relative. This experience formed the basis for her later pioneering travel writings. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Mariana Starke returned to Italy and devoted the rest of her life to writing and revising her very practical travel guides to Europe, effectively re-invented the genre. She never married. Mariana Starke wrote Letters from Italy (1800) which was published in London, and Travels on the Continent: Written for the Use and Particular Information of Travellers (1820). Her career as a translator spanned the two centuries, and she wrote poetry in the form of sonnets. Her work earned her celebrity status in her lifetime.