Scour the internet for famous 19th-century explorers and, chances are, 99 per cent of them will be men. Furthermore, there’ll be little mention of Mariana Starke.
It’s a striking oversight. A pioneering travel writer who circumnavigated the battlefields of France and Italy during the age of Napoleon, Starke was a woman years ahead of her time who has a valid claim to being the inventor of the modern guidebook.
Sharing the same publisher as Jane Austen, the industrious Mariana undertook much of her research on the bumpy post-roads of continental Europe several decades before the advent of the steam train and continued to perfect her craft until she was well into her sixties.
Her debut travel book, published in 1800, evolved over a period of 40 years (and numerous editions) from a collection of personal reflections on art and culture, into a consummate travel guide that included
