Dame Freya Madeleine Stark, DBE (b. 31 Jan1893, Paris France - d. 9 May1993, Asolo Italy) was a British travel writer.
Life
Freya Stark was born in Paris, where her parents were studying art. Her mother, Flora, was an Italian of Polish/German descent, her father, Robert, an English painter from Devonshire.[Stark (1950), p. 2-4] ]In her lifetime she was famous for her experiences in the Middle East, her writing, and her cartography. Freya Stark was not only one of the first Western women to travel through the Arabian deserts (Hadhramaut); she often traveled solo into areas where few Europeans, let alone women, had ever been.
She spent much of her childhood in North Italy, helped by the fact that a friend of her father's, Pen Browning, had bought three houses in Asolo. She also had a grandmother in Genoa.[Stark (1950), p. 30-64] For her 9th birthday she received a copy of the "Thousand and One Nights", and became fascinated with the Orient. She was often ill while young, and confined to the house, so found an outlet in reading. She delighted in reading French, in particular Dumas, and taught herself Latin. When she was 16 she had an accident in a factory in Italy, when her hair got caught in a machine, and she had to spend four months getting skin grafts in hospital, which left her face slightly disfigured.][Stark (1950), p. 84] ]She later learned Arabic and Persian, studied history in London and during WW1 worked as a nurse in Italy,[Stark (1950), p. 146] where her mother had remained and taken a share in a business. Her sister, Vera, married the co-owner, Mario.]In November 1927 she visited Asolo for the first time in years, and later that month boarded a ship for Beirut, where her travels in the East began.[Stark (1950), p. 333] She based herself first at the home of James Elroy Flecker in Lebanon and then in Baghdad, where she met the British high commissioner.]By 1931 she had completed three dangerous treks into the wilderness of western Iran, in parts of which no Westerner had ever been before; and had located the long-fabled Valleys of the Assassins (hashish-eaters). During the 1930's she penetrated the hinterland of southern Arabia, where only a handful of Western explorers had previously ventured and then never as far or as widely as she went.
During World War II, she joined the Ministry of Information and contributed to the creation of a propagandanetwork aimed at persuading Arabs to support the Allies or at least remain neutral. She wrote over two dozen books based on her travels, the first of which was "Letters from Syria".
Works
* "Baghdad Sketches" (Baghdad, 1932). ISBN 0-8101-6023-4
* "The Valleys of the Assassins" (London, 1934).
* "The Southern Gates of Arabia" (London, 1936).
* "Seen in the Hadhramaut" (London 1938).
* "A Winter in Arabia" (London, 1940).
* "Letters from Syria" (London, 1943).
* "East is West" (London, 1945).
* "Traveller's Prelude" (London, 1950).
* "Beyond Euphrates. Autobiography 1928-1933" (London, 1951).
* "The Coast of Incense" (London, 1953).
* "Ionia, A Quest" (London, 1954).
* "The Lycian Shore" (London, 1956).
* "Alexander's Path: From Caria to Cilicia" (London, 1958).
* "Riding to the Tigris" (London, 1959).
* "Dust in the Lion's Paw. Autobiography 1939-46" (London, 1961).
* "Rome on the Euphrates" (London, 1966).
* "The Zodiac Arch" (London, 1968).
* "A Peak in Darien" (London 1976).
* "The Journey's Echo: Selected Travel Writings" (Ecco, 1988). ISBN 0-880-01218-8
References and sources
;Notes
;Sources
*cite book|last= Stark|first= Freya |year= 1950|title= Traveller's Prelude|location= London|publisher= John Murray
*cite book|last= Moorehead|first= Caroline |year= 1985|title= Freya Stark|location= MIddlesex|publisher = Penguin ISBN 0-14-008108-9
* Jane Fletcher Geniesse, "Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark" (New York: Random House, 2001).
* Peter H. Hansen, ‘Stark, Dame Freya Madeline (1893–1993)’, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38280 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] , Oxford University Press, 2004
External links
* [http://fodors.iexplore.com/res/explorer_stark.jhtml iExplore on Freya Stark]
* [http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=Ws5n6tWC2a&isbn=0710306776&itm=2 Arabian Phoenix]
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