The Explorer on Marriage : ‘a very surprising adventure’

Autograph Letter, signed (“Freya Stark”), to Miss Wade, discussing Stark’s impending marriage and other postwar matters, dated 1.10.47.

London: 1 October 1947.

Price: $375.00


About the item

Ink on paper, 2 pages on a sheet of letterhead, 11 Cumberland Mansions, George St. London W.1. 1 vols. 12mo. The Explorer on Marriage : ‘a very surprising adventure’. Fine.

Item #307388

Brief but rich personal letter from author and explorer Freya Stark (?1893-1993), evidently unpublished:

Reading in part, “How nice to hear from you after all this long while — & thank you so much for your good wishes. It seems a very surprising adventure to launch into at my age but we are old friends, & both fond of the same things … & meanwhile we are being sent to Barbados. It is all great fun.”

Stark discusses her return to her house in Italy after the war, and writes of her intention to make that her home.

Stark “married Stewart Henry Perowne (1901–1989), a diplomatic colleague at Aden, Cairo, and Baghdad, on 7 October 1947 at St Margaret's, Westminster. After accompanying him to a posting in Barbados she returned to Asolo in April 1948. They reunited in 1950, when he was appointed to Benghazi, Cyrenaica (Libya), but he retired in 1951 and they separated in 1952. … Stark longed to be married but found it difficult to sustain intimate relationships” (ODNB).