Fluent in at least seven languages and a writer of ravishing prose accounts of her journeys, Freya Stark was one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. In 1934 her first book, Valley of the Assassins, was hailed as a classic and T.E. Lawrence pronounced Stark 'a gallant creature, a remarkable person'. It marked the start of a dazzling career as a writer, explorer and official diplomat which led Stark to explore ancient trading routes in the Yemeni desert, Crusaders' castles in Syria, uncharted regions of ...
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Fluent in at least seven languages and a writer of ravishing prose accounts of her journeys, Freya Stark was one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. In 1934 her first book, Valley of the Assassins, was hailed as a classic and T.E. Lawrence pronounced Stark 'a gallant creature, a remarkable person'. It marked the start of a dazzling career as a writer, explorer and official diplomat which led Stark to explore ancient trading routes in the Yemeni desert, Crusaders' castles in Syria, uncharted regions of Arabia and Alexander the Great's path through Turkey, often travelling alone through dangerous and uncomfortable territories - once having to be airlifted to safety by the RAF. During the Second World War, she worked for the Foreign Office in Baghdad and Cairo and made an ill-fated tour of America for the Ministry of Information. She married late - and unwisely - but continued to travel and write well into old age, going to the Himalayas aged 89, and lived to be 100, leaving a legacy of over thirty volumes of travel writings, autobiography and letters.Her life reads like an adventure story, imbued with the captivating spirit of the East. Jane Geniesse's ebullient yet touching account of Stark's life uncovers the complexity and charm surrounding someone who was both hugely feted and yet repeatedly disappointed in her private life - a romantic, a complete original.
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Seller's Description:
Very good in Very good jacket. VGC. Chatto and Windus, 1999. First UK edition-first printing(2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1). Black hardback with laminated Dj cover(a couple of nicks and scratches on the laminated cover), both in VGC. Ex-Library book with stamp, pocket, sticker but in VGC. Illustrated with b/w photos, drawings, maps. Nice and clean pages with a ink mark and light shelf wear on the outer edges, small colour mark on the edge of the first page of the book, a couple of creases and nicks on the edges of the pages. The book is in VGC with light shelf wear.420pp including Bibliography, notes, list of illustrations and index. Price un-clipped. A collectable first edition. This is another paragraph Review: One image stands out from Jane Geniesse's new biography of the writer and explorer Dame Freya Stark. Taken just after her first trip to Damascus in 1928, it is a photograph of Stark in full Arab dress: a remarkable emblem of this woman's passion for the East, her inchoate wish to explore the mysteries of a new land. Born to Flora and Robert Stark on January 31, 1893, Stark was, on the one hand, a creature of the late 19th century: a woman brought up within the repressive confines of Victorian family life. On the other hand, that family life was erratic, nomadic, even scandalous. In particular, Flora Stark looms large in Freya's life: a mother, driven by her own desires for domestic and artistic independence, from whom her daughter struggles to break free. The connection between that struggle and Freya's passion for travel--the lure of the East in her eyes--is one of the obscure, but fascinating, threads to emerge from Geniesse's biography. Battling against frail health, as well as social convention, Stark carved out a place for herself as an outstanding cultural explorer and commentator. At the same time, as Geniesse uncovers, she engaged in a lifelong struggle against low self-esteem (a terrible accident as a child left her permanently scarred) to become the star of her own adventure story. Bringing into focus Stark's personal and public personae, Geniesse has written an absorbing and timely account of a woman who played a key part in the charged encounter between Europe and the Middle East in the 20th century.
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Seller's Description:
F in F- jacket. F/F-. 8vo. original charcoal boards in dustwrapper (a trifle rubbed & sunned); pp. xxiv, 404 (last blank), with maps + illustrations. Heavy item (1.1 kg), additional postage may be required for international delivery. A fine copy.
