View source for Freya Stark

{{short description|British explorer and writer}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix = [[Dame]]
| name        = Freya Stark
| honorific_suffix = [[Order of the British Empire (DBE)|DBE]]
| image       = Dame Freya Madeline Stark (1923).jpg
| alt         =
| caption     = Portrait by [[Herbert Arnould Olivier]] (1923), [[National Portrait Gallery, London]]
| birth_name  =
| birth_date  = {{Birth date|df=yes|1893|01|31}}
| birth_place = [[Paris]], [[French Third Republic]]
| death_date  = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1993|05|09|1893|01|31}}
| death_place = [[Asolo]], [[Veneto]], [[Italy]]
| nationality = [[British people|British]], [[Italians|Italian]]
| occupation  = Explorer, travel writer
}}

'''Dame Freya Madeline Stark''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|DBE|sep=,|size=100%}} (31 January 1893{{snd}}9 May 1993) was a British-Italian explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the [[Middle East]] and [[Afghanistan]] as well as several autobiographical works and essays. She was one of the first non-Arabs known to travel through the southern [[Arabian Desert]] in modern times.

==Early life and studies==

Stark was born on 31 January 1893 in Paris,<ref name="Indie">{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dame-freya-stark-2322233.html|title=Obituary: Dame Freya Stark|work=The Independent|date=11 May 1993|access-date=31 March 2014|last=Ruthven|first=Malise}}</ref> where her parents were studying art. Her mother, Flora, was of English, French, German, and Polish descent. Her father, Robert, was an English painter from Devon.<ref name= stark1>Stark (1950), pp. 2–4</ref> Stark spent much of her childhood in northern Italy, helped by the fact that [[Robert Barrett Browning|Pen Browning]], a friend of her father, had bought three houses in [[Asolo]]. Her maternal grandmother lived in [[Genoa]].<ref name= stark2>Stark (1950), pp. 30–64</ref>

Her parents' marriage was unhappy from the outset. They separated early in Stark's childhood. Stark's biographer, Jane Fletcher Geniesse—quoting Stark's cousin, [[Nora Stanton Barney]]—claimed that Stark's biological father was Obediah Dyer, "a well-to-do young man from a prominent family in New Orleans". No corroboration of this account, even by Stark, is known; she did not make any reference to it in any of her writings, including her autobiography.<ref>Geniesse (2010), pp. 363–369</ref>

For her ninth birthday, Stark received a copy of ''[[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 [[Alexandre Dumas]]. When she was thirteen, in an accident in a factory in Italy, her hair was caught in a machine, tearing her scalp and ripping her right ear off.<ref name="eastiswest_freya">{{Cite news|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/east-is-west-claudia-roth-pierpont|title=East Is West|last=Pierpont|first=Claudia Roth|magazine=The New Yorker|date=2011-04-11|access-date=2019-05-18|language=en|issn=0028-792X}}</ref> She had to spend four months getting skin grafts in hospital, which left her face disfigured.<ref name= stark3>Stark (1950), p. 84</ref> She usually wore hats or bonnets, often flamboyant ones, to cover her scars.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" />

At the age of 30, hoping to escape her life as a flower farmer in northern Italy, Stark chose to study languages at university. She chose to study [[Arabic language|Arabic]] and later, [[Persian language|Persian]]. She studied at [[Bedford College, London]] and the [[School of Oriental and African Studies]] (SOAS).

==Early travels and writings==

{{rquote|right|One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.<ref>Cited in [[Molly Izzard]], "A Marvellous Eye", ''[[Cornucopia (magazine)|Cornucopia]]'' Issue 2</ref>|Freya Stark}}

During World War I, Stark worked as a postal censor,<ref name="Hubbard-Hall2024">{{cite book |last1=Hubbard-Hall |first1=Claire |title=Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence |date=2024 |publisher=W&N |isbn=1399603434 |pages=352}}</ref>{{rp|31–32}} trained as a [[Voluntary Aid Detachment|VAD]] and served initially with [[G. M. Trevelyan]]'s [[British Red Cross]] ambulance unit, based at the [[Villa Trento]] near [[Udine]].<ref>Anne Powell, ''Women in the War Zone''<!-- publishing info needed --></ref> Her mother had remained in Italy and taken a share in a business; her sister Vera married the co-owner. In 1926, Vera died after a miscarriage. In her writings, Stark explained that Vera was not able to live life on her own terms, and she would not do the same. Shortly afterward, she began her travels.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" />

In November 1927, she visited Asolo for the first time in years. Later that month she boarded a ship for Beirut, where her travels in the East began.<ref name="stark5">Stark (1950), p. 333</ref> She stayed first at the home of [[James Elroy Flecker]] in Lebanon, then in Baghdad, Iraq (then a British protectorate), where she met the [[High Commissioner (Commonwealth)|British high commissioner]].<ref name="stark5"/> During that trip, she secretly travelled by donkey with a [[Druze]] guide and an English woman. She kept the journey secret as Syria and Lebanon were under French control as the [[Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon]]. This was a repressive government system that did not allow travel within the region. The group travelled by night and took remote, countryside routes. However, French Army officers still caught them, thought the women to be spies, but released them three days later. After her trip, Stark wrote about the repressive French regime and the abuse inflicted on the Syrian people in an English magazine.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" />

By 1931, she had completed three dangerous treks into the wilderness of western [[Iran]], parts where Westerners were unknown, and had located the long-fabled Valleys of the Assassins ([[Hashshashin]]s).<ref name=SalakIran>{{cite web|url=http://www.kirasalak.com/Iran.html|title=National Geographic article about Iran and Freya Stark|last=Salak|first=Kira|publisher=National Geographic Adventure}}</ref> She described these explorations in ''The Valleys of the Assassins'' (1934).<ref>{{cite web |title=The Great Ones – Freya Stark |url=http://www.iexplore.com/res/explorer_stark.jhtml |website=History's Greatest Explorers |publisher=iExplore |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090826154503/http://www.iexplore.com/res/explorer_stark.jhtml |archive-date=26 August 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref> She received the [[Royal Geographical Society]]'s [[Back Award]] in 1933.<ref>Geniesse (2010), p. 148</ref>

In 1934, Stark sailed down the [[Red Sea]] to [[Aden]] to begin a new adventure. She hoped to trace the frankincense route of the [[Hadhramaut]], the hinterland of southern Arabia.<ref name="southern gates">{{Cite book|publisher=Modern Library|title=The Southern Gates of Arabia: a Journey in the Hadhramaut|isbn=9780375757549|location=London|orig-year=1936|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.106099}} First published in 1936.</ref> Only a handful of Western explorers had ventured into the region but never so far or so widely as she.<ref name="southern gates"/> Her goal was to reach the ancient city of [[Shabwa]], which was rumoured to have been the capital of the [[Queen of Sheba]]. She fell seriously ill on the trip. After contracting measles from a child in a harem, as well as dysentery, she had to be airlifted to a British hospital in Aden.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> Although she never reached Shabwa, she was able to travel extensively and recount many experiences. Stark  returned to the region later for additional trips. During these journeys, she encountered [[slavery in Yemen]], which caused a "moral predicament", according to a New Yorker profile. Stark reasoned that slavery seemed to decline in less religious societies, and thus she felt that slavery would decline in Arabia as it evolved.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> She published her account of the region in three books, ''The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut'' (1936), ''Seen In The Hadhramaut'' (1938) and ''A Winter in Arabia'' (1940). For her travels and accounts, she received the [[Founder's Medal]] of the Royal Geographical Society.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/C5962519-882A-4C67-803D-0037308C756D/0/GoldMedallists18322011.pdf |title=List of Past Gold Medal Winners |publisher=Royal Geographical Society |access-date=24 August 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927221002/http://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/C5962519-882A-4C67-803D-0037308C756D/0/GoldMedallists18322011.pdf |archive-date=27 September 2011 |df=dmy }}</ref>

==World War II==

In the autumn of 1939 Stark offered her services to the British [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]].<ref name=Cooper>{{cite book |last= Cooper |first= Artemis |title= Cairo: In the War 1939–1945 |location= London |publisher= John Murray |date= 2013 |pages= 100–103  |type= Paperback |isbn= 978-1-84854-884-8}}</ref> Her prior experience in the Middle East was sufficient for the Ministry to send her to Yemen to spread propaganda on the British cause. Part of her duties involved showing films, despite the rulers of Yemen being strict Muslims who disapproved of any images of humans and wildlife. After working for two months in Yemen and Aden, she was sent to Cairo, a posting that doubled her salary to £1,200. Following her arrival in June 1940, she set up an intimate salon where, over tea four times a week, she advocated for the British cause. Before long, Christopher Scaife who was teaching English at the [[Cairo University|King Fuad I University]] was sending her the odd Egyptian student who wanted to know what the British were fighting for. Stark encouraged them to bring their friends and the discussions expanded to cover not only the war but also its effects on Egypt. These discussions grew to become the basis of the ''[[Ikhwan al Hurriya]]'' (''Brotherhood of Freedom'') propaganda network that was aimed at persuading Arabs to support the Allies or at least remain neutral.<ref>James R. Vaughan, "The failure of American and British Propaganda in the Middle East, 1945–57. Unconquerable Minds", Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 27.</ref>
 
By the middle of the war, the brotherhood claimed to have tens of thousands of members.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> The work involved Stark travelling all over Egypt and often speaking for as many as 10 hours a day. These wartime experiences were described in her ''Letters from Syria'' (1942) and ''East is West'' (1945).<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/11/obituaries/dame-freya-stark-travel-writer-is-dead-at-100.html|title= Dame Freya Stark, Travel Writer, Is Dead at 100|last= Flint |first= Peter B.|date=1993-05-11|work=The New York Times |access-date=2017-05-24|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Following a visit to Iraq during which she was besieged in the British Embassy during an attempted [[1941 Iraqi coup d'état|coup d'état]] in April 1941, Stark was asked by British Ambassador Sir [[Kinahan Cornwallis]] to set up a branch of the ''Ikhwan al Hurriya'' in that country.<ref name=Cooper/> Stark agreed and spent the next two years in Iraq dispensing British propaganda.<ref name=Cooper/>

In February 1943, she visited [[Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell|Archibald Wavell]] and his wife in India. To assist her with the return journey, Wavell arranged for her to have a car. After driving it from Delhi to Tehran, she sold it, but officials in Cairo and Aden took a dim view of her taking upon herself to dispose of government property in wartime. Stark believed that since it had been given to her, she could sell it.<ref name=Cooper/>

In 1943, Stark went on an official tour of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]]. She gave speeches calling for quotas on Jewish migration to Palestine, which angered the global Jewish community. However, Stark felt that she was not at all anti-Jewish; she simply felt that Arab consent should be considered before mass migration took place. These speeches are thought to be her most controversial work during WWII.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> In 1943, she wrote "I really can’t see that there is any kind of way of dealing with the Zionist question except by a massacre now and then... What can we do? It is the ruthless last penny that they squeeze out of you that does it... the world has chosen to massacre them at intervals, and whose fault is it?"<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Karsh |first1=Efraim |author-link=Efraim Karsh |date=July 2012 |title=The war against the Jews |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241713271 |journal=Israel Affairs |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=319–343 |doi=10.1080/13537121.2012.689514 |s2cid=144144725}}</ref>

==Post-war travel and writings==

Following her marriage in 1947, she published a volume of miscellaneous essays, ''Perseus in the Wind'' (1948) and three volumes of autobiography, ''Traveller's Prelude'' (1950), ''Beyond Euphrates. Autobiography 1928–1933'' (1951), and ''The Coast of Incense. Autobiography 1933–1939'' (1953).

Following the failure of her marriage, Stark again began travelling, with her first extensive travels after the war being in Turkey, which was the basis of her books ''Ionia a Quest'' (1954), ''The Lycian Shore'' (1956), ''Alexander's Path'' (1958), and ''Riding to the Tigris'' (1959). After this, she continued her memoirs with ''Dust in the Lion's Paw. Autobiography 1939–1946'' (1961), and she published a history of ''Rome on the Euphrates: The Story of a Frontier'' (1966) and another collection of essays, ''The Zodiac Arch'' (1968).

The last expedition was to Afghanistan in 1968, when she was 75 years old. She travelled to visit the twelfth-century [[Minaret of Jam]].<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> In 1970, she published ''The Minaret of Djam: An Excursion into Afghanistan''. In her retirement in Asolo, apart from a short survey, ''Turkey: A Sketch of Turkish History'' (1971), she busied herself by putting together a new collection of essays, ''A Peak in Darien'' (1976), and preparing selections of her ''Letters'' (8 volumes, 1974–82; one volume, ''Over the rim of the world: selected letters'', 1982), and of her travel writings, ''The Journey's Echo'' (1988).

== Photographic legacy ==

Stark, as well as being a writer, was a prolific and accomplished photographer.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ruthven|first=Malise|date=2006-01-01|title=A subversive imperialist: reappraising Freya Stark|url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=11108673&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA229721261&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs|journal=Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics|language=English|issue=26|pages=147–169}}</ref> Some forty-plus of her albums, containing approximately 6,000 black-and-white prints, together with some 50,000 negatives are held as the Freya Stark Photograph Collection in the archive of the Middle East Centre, [[St Antony's College, Oxford|St Antony’s College, Oxford]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/freya-stark-microfiche-catalogue.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230704201450/https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/freya-stark-microfiche-catalogue.pdf |archive-date=4 July 2023 |title=Guide: Freya Stark Photograph Collection |publisher=IDC Publishers |access-date=19 January 2022 |url-status=live }}</ref> Many of the photographs were taken with the same camera, a [[Leica Camera|Leica]] III, which she bought in 1933 and used on her travels. The collection of photographs was published in its entirety in 1999,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://brill.com/view/title/16005|title=Freya Stark Photograph Collection|date=1999-01-01|publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-19787-9|language=en}}</ref> some having previously appeared in books such as ''A Traveller in Time: A Photographic Journey with Freya Stark'' by [[Malise Ruthven]], 1986, ''Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark'' by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, 2001 and, of course, her own books, an example being ''Rivers of Time: Photographs by Freya Stark'' published in 1982.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Stark|first=Freya|title=Rivers of Time: Photographs by Freya Stark|publisher=William Blackwood & Sons|year=1982|isbn=9780851581477}}</ref>

Smaller collections of photographs by Stark are held at the Biblioteca Berenson, [[Villa I Tatti]], Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies Repository,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Freya Stark {{!}} I Tatti {{!}} The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies|url=https://itatti.harvard.edu/berenson-library/collections/photograph-archives/stark|access-date=2022-01-19|website=itatti.harvard.edu}}</ref> in the [[Harry Ransom Center|Harry Ransom Centre]], the [[University of Texas at Austin|University of Texas]],<ref>{{Cite web|last1=Berenson|first1=Bernard|last2=Besse|first2=Antonin|last3=Birgi|first3=Muharrem Nuri|last4=Boido|first4=Costanza di Roascio|last5=Buddicom|first5=Venetia Digby|last6=Caton-Thompson|first6=Gertrude|last7=Cholmondeley|first7=Sybil Sassoon|last8=Cockerell|first8=Sydney Carlyle|last9=Cooper|first9=Pamela|title=Freya Stark: An Inventory of Her Collection at the Harry Ransom Center|url=https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00607|access-date=2022-01-19|website=norman.hrc.utexas.edu}}</ref> at the Special Collections of the [[University of New South Wales]], [[Canberra]],<ref>{{Cite web|title=Guide to the Papers of Freya Stark [MSS 118]|url=https://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/special-collections/guide-papers-freya-stark-mss-118|access-date=2022-01-19|website=www.unsw.adfa.edu.au|language=en}}</ref> and in the [[Conway Library]] whose archive, of primarily architectural images, is being digitised under the wider Courtauld Connects project.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-06-30|title=Who made the Conway Library?|url=https://sites.courtauld.ac.uk/digitalmedia/2020/06/30/who-made-the-conway-library/|access-date=2022-01-19|website=Digital Media|language=en-GB}}</ref>

In 1934, Stark was awarded the [[Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland|Royal Asiatic Society]]’s Richard Burton Memorial Medal in recognition of her contribution to geographic exploration and travel writing and a portrait of her resides in the society’s lecture room. The society holds 65 glass slides taken by Stark.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Freya Stark Glass Slide Collection|url=https://royalasiaticsociety.org/the-freya-stark-glass-slide-collection/|access-date=2022-01-19|website=Royal Asiatic Society|language=en-GB}}</ref>

A photograph of Freya Stark by [[Robert Mapplethorpe]], taken in 1975, was a gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the [[J. Paul Getty Trust]] and the [[Los Angeles County Museum of Art]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Freya Stark (Getty Museum)|url=https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/255479/robert-mapplethorpe-freya-stark-american-negative-1975-print-2003/|access-date=2022-01-19|website=The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles|language=en}}</ref>

==Later life==

She was appointed a [[Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire]] (DBE) in the [[1972 New Year's Honours]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Supplement to ''The London Gazette'' of Friday, 31 December 1971 |url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/45554/supplement/8/data.htm |access-date=29 December 2019 |work=The London Gazette |issue=45554 |date=31 December 1971 |page=8 |quote=D.B.E. To be Ordinary Dames Commanders of the Civil Division of the said Most Excellent Order: [...] Miss Freya Stark, C.B.E. (Freya Madeline, Mrs. Perowne), writer and traveller.}}</ref>

She died at Asolo on 9 May 1993, a few months after her hundredth birthday.<ref name="Indie"/>

==Personal life==

In 1947, at the age of 54, she married [[Stewart Perowne]], a British administrator, Arabist, and historian, whom she had met while working as his assistant in Aden early in World War II.<ref name=Cooper/><ref name="NYT">{{cite news|title=Stewart Perowne, 87, Diplomat and author|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/16/obituaries/stewart-perowne-87-diplomat-and-author.html|access-date=27 October 2012|newspaper=New York Times|date=16 May 1989}}</ref> Perowne was homosexual, which Stark did not know when they first married, although most of his friends did. Their marriage had many troubles, and Stark did not adjust well to being the wife of a civil servant.<ref name="eastiswest_freya" /> The couple had no children, separated in 1952, but did not divorce.{{citation needed|date=February 2024}}

While revisiting Yemen in 1976, Stark suggested to the Secretary of the British Embassy with whom she was staying that she had never come close ‘to losing my virtue… including the nights I spent with Stewart.’ During that same trip, after decades without contact, Stark wrote to Perowne again, wishing him well.<ref>Moscrop, Andrew. The Camel's Neighbour : Travel and Travellers in Yemen. Oxford, 2020. Page 201.</ref>

Perowne died in 1989.<ref name="NYT"/>

==Writings==

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
* {{cite book |title=The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels |year=1934|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.211087/page/n7}} (1934) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=The Southern Gates of Arabia A Journey in the Hadhramaut |year=1936|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.106099}} (1936)
* {{cite book |title=Baghdad Sketches |year=1937|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.81846}} (1937) {{free access}}
* ''Seen in the Hadhramaut'' (1938)
* {{cite book |title=A Winter in Arabia |year=1940|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.211161}}(1940) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title= Letters from Syria |year=1942|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.60665}}(1942) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title= East is West |url=https://archive.org/details/FreyaStarkEastIsWest/page/n3}}(1945), published in US as ''Arab Island: The Middle East, 1939–1943''. {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=Perseus in the Wind |year=1948|url=https://archive.org/details/FreyaStarkPerseusInTheWind}}(1948) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=Traveller's Prelude: Autobiography 1893–1927 |year=1983|isbn=9780712602747|url=https://archive.org/details/travellersprelud00star|last1=Stark|first1=Freya|publisher=Century}} (1950) {{free access}} Registration required.
* {{cite book |title=Beyond Euphrates: Autobiography 1928–1933 |year=1951|url=https://archive.org/details/beyondeuphratesa0000frey/page/n7}}(1951) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=The Coast of Incense: Autobiography 1933–1939 |year=1990|isbn=9780099728108|url=https://archive.org/details/coastofincense00frey|last1=Stark|first1=Freya|publisher=Arrow }} (1953) {{free access}} Registration required.
* {{cite book |title=Ionia, A Quest |publisher=Harcourt, Brace And Company|url=https://archive.org/details/ioniaaquest001948mbp}}(1954) {{free access}}
* {{cite journal |title=The Lycian Shore |year=1956|bibcode=1956GeogJ.122..495D |url=https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.5631 |last1=Davis |first1=P. H. |last2=Stark |first2=Freya |last3=Kinross |first3=Lord |journal=The Geographical Journal |volume=122 |issue=4 |page=495 |doi=10.2307/1790199 |jstor=1790199 }}(1956) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=Alexander's Path: From Caria to Cilicia |year=1958|url=https://archive.org/details/FreyaStarkAlexandersPathFromCariaToCilicia/page/n3}} (1958) {{free access}}
* {{cite journal |title=Riding to the Tigris |bibcode=1960GeogJ.126..218D |last1=Davis |first1=P. H. |last2=Stark |first2=Freya |journal=The Geographical Journal |date=1960 |volume=126 |issue=2 |page=218 |doi=10.2307/1793984 |jstor=1793984 }} (1959) 
* {{cite book |title=Dust in the Lion's Paw. Autobiography 1939–1946 |year=1961|publisher=Harcourt, Brace & World|url=https://archive.org/details/dustinthelionspa011176mbp/page/n7}} (1961) {{free access}}
* {{cite book |title=The Journey's Echo: Selected Travel Writings }} (1963) foreword by [[Lawrence Durrell]]
* {{cite book |title=Rome on the Euphrates: The Story of a Frontier }} (1966) 
* {{cite book |title=The Zodiac Arch }} (1968) 
* {{cite book |title=Space, Time and Movement in Landscape }} (1969) 
* {{cite book |title=The Minaret of Djam: An Excursion into Afghanistan }} (1970) 
* {{cite book |title=Turkey: A Sketch of Turkish History }} (1971) 
* {{cite book |title=Letters, 1914–1980 }} (8 vols., 1974–82) edited by [[Caroline Moorehead]]
* {{cite book |title=A Peak in Darien }} (1976) 
* {{cite book |title=Over the Rim of the World: Selected Letters }} (1988) edited by Caroline Moorehead
{{div col end}}

==See also==

*[[List of female explorers and travellers]]

==References==
{{Reflist|33em}}

==Sources==

{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U8EG_175eQEC&pg=PA365 |title=Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark |first=Jane Fletcher |last=Geniesse |publisher=Random House Publishing Group |year=2010 |isbn=9780307756855}}
* P. H. Hansen, 'Stark, Dame Freya Madeline (1893–1993)', in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (2004. Oxford University Press)
* M. Izzard  'A Marvellous Bright Eye: Freya Stark', in ''[[Cornucopia (magazine)|Cornucopia]]'' Issue 2 (1992)
* M. Izzard, ''Freya Stark:  A Biography'' (1993)
* C. Moorehead, ''Freya Stark'' (1985. Penguin) {{ISBN|0-14-008108-9}}
* R. Knott, 'Posted in Wartime' (2017, Pen & Sword) – features inter alia the wartime correspondence of Freya Stark.
* M. Canali, 'Freya Stark', in ''[[Gnosis - Rivista italiana di Intelligence]]'' Issue 4 (2018) e 1 (2019)
{{refend}}

==Further reading==

*{{cite book |last1=Duncan |first1=Joyce |title=Ahead of Their Time : a Biographical Dictionary of Risk-Taking Women. |date=2010 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |location=Portsmouth |isbn=9781280908699}}

==External links==

{{wikiquote}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Freya Stark}}
* {{OL author|75732A}}
* {{cite book |last1=De Gaury |first1=Gerald |title=Arabia Phoenix: an account of a visit to Ibn Saud, chieftain of the austere Wahhabis and powerful Arabian king |date=15 August 2000 |publisher=Kegan Paul |isbn=0710306776}}
* {{UK National Archives ID}}
*Lamothe, Lori. [https://medium.com/the-collector/the-woman-who-captured-the-assassins-castle-ba81e24d1a91/ "The Woman Who Captured the Assassins' Castle"] in The Collector.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stark, Freya}}
[[Category:1893 births]]
[[Category:1993 deaths]]
[[Category:British travel writers]]
[[Category:British women travel writers]]
[[Category:Alumni of SOAS University of London]]
[[Category:British women centenarians]]
[[Category:British people of German descent]]
[[Category:British people of Polish descent]]
[[Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:20th-century British explorers]]
[[Category:Explorers of Asia]]
[[Category:Explorers of Arabia]]
[[Category:British women explorers]]
[[Category:Members of the Society of Woman Geographers]]
[[Category:Explorers of Iran]]
[[Category:British expatriates in France]]
[[Category:British expatriates in Italy]]
[[Category:Alumni of Bedford College, London]]
[[Category:Explorers from Paris]]