Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs. Perowne, DBE was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as several autobiographic works and essays. She was one of the first outsiders to travel through the southern Arabian deserts. Freya Madeline Stark was born on 31 January 1893 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 Devon. Stark spent much of her childhood in north Italy, helped by the fact that Pen... Browning, a friend of her father, had bought three houses in Asolo. Her maternal grandmother lived in Genoa. For her 9th birthday she received a copy of the One Thousand and One Nights, and became fascinated with the Orient. She was often ill while young and confined to the house, so she found an outlet in reading. She delighted in reading French, in particular Dumas, and taught herself Latin.
more
| Birthdate: | January 31, 1893 |
| Birthplace: | Paris |
| Date of death: | May 9, 1993 |