Mariana Starke

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MS had several distinct authorial careers. She is best known as a late eighteenth-century dramatist writing about colonial India, and as an early nineteenth-century travel-writer producing practical guides to Europe. Her career as a translator spanned both centuries, and in its later phase was accompanied by original poetry in the form of sonnets.

Milestones

Last week of September 1762

MS was born at Epsom in Surrey, the second, but the first surviving, of her parents' children.
Crawford, Elizabeth. “Posts tagged Mariana Starke”. Woman and her Sphere.

By May 1787

A version of children's plays by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis , The Theatre of Education. A New Translation from the French, appears to be the anonymous work of MS and the little-known Millecent Thomas (formerly Parkhurst).
Dow, Gillian. “The British Reception of Madame de Genlis’s Writings for Children: Plays and Tales of Instruction and Delight”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
29
, No. 3, pp. 367-81.
369
Pitcher, Edward W. “Mariana Starke and Millecent Thomas: Early Translators of Genlis’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Le théâtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes (1779-1780)</span&gt”;. Notes and Queries, Vol.
45 (243)
, No. 1, pp. 81-2.
81-2

9 August 1788

MS 's first original play, The Sword of Peace; or, A Voyage of Love, a prose comedy in five acts, opened at the Haymarket Theatre .
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
5: 1080

Spring 1838

MS died in Milan, on her way home to England from Naples on yet another journey undertaken at the age of about seventy-six to research a new guidebook.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Feminist Companion Archive.

Biography

Birth and Family

Last week of September 1762

MS was born at Epsom in Surrey, the second, but the first surviving, of her parents' children.
Crawford, Elizabeth. “Posts tagged Mariana Starke”. Woman and her Sphere.