Book Review

From what we have learned, Mariana Starke has gotten her success, travelling around the world, and writing about her experiences, this being the thing that has made her an eminent woman. Upon reading her novel, Letters from Italy, I got faced with excellent imagery that set the scene of where she was, without me having to be there. I also noticed that her travels may only be available a luxury to those who have money, although it is a fine and cheaper way of reading about a place without going yourself. By looking at different letters in her book, we will see the kind of audience that Starke had expected, and the way it was perceived by those when it came out. 

I first want to talk about the imagery that she used in her first letter, and how it transports you right to where she is. She says, “[t]o describe the road between this town and La Chiandola is impossible, neither do I think it in the power of imagination to picture such scenery as we beheld. All I can say is, that we ascended gradually by the side of a magnificent torrent, which by rushing impetuously over immense blocks of marble, forms itself into an endless variety of cascades; while the stupendous rocks through which this road is pieced, from their immense height, grotesque shapes, and verdant clothing, added to the beautiful waterfalls with which they are decorated, present the most awfully magnificent grotto that the masterly hand of nature ever formed” (Starke, 4). Right off that bat you can see the incredible imagery that is going to follow throughout the book and make it as great as a seller as it clearly was. It is so important in a travel novel to accurately describe the places you are, so that the readers are so drawn in that they go out to these places and see them for themselves. This is exactly how the readers of her books would have reacted, thus making it such a success. Even if some of her readers were not able to physically go due to money or other issues, the description alone is enough to feel like you were transported away to another world. That being an essential part of reading in most cases, fiction, or non-fiction. 

While reading the book, you start to learn that she was in places where historical events were happening, and she talks a lot about these events in her letters, especially because some of these events had led her to be in danger. While learning about these events and how someone experienced these moments can be quite interesting, it may take away from the travel part of her travel letters. For a couple of her letters, she talks about what is happening in the news opposed to where she is in the world. For the readers at this time, it could go one of two ways, either they really enjoy the perspective of someone on the front lines of these events, explaining them in full detail, or it could stray away from the point of these travel guides and give information that a person already knows or was not trying to get out of the letter. It just reads as though it is an information overload on the events that are happening in the places that she is in, and although right now it seems as a history piece of literature, at the time, it was probably more read as a news/ current events piece. Which again could or could not interest the readers of a travel journal audience, it just depended on the kind of information they were looking for. 

While reading this book, I get the sense that she is writing for the readers of England, whether that be intentional or not. There is a quote here, “by a road cut out of rocks, and rendered, by means of vast and almost innumerable arches, as smooth and safe as the turnpikes of England” (Starke, 2). Although this could just be a general sense, I feel as though this imagery would only be helpful to those who know the turnpikes of England, or those as well, who have seen the turnpikes of England, which may be confusing for those who have never seen these before.  

While reading this book, I noticed a lot of historical information on the years that she was travelling for, and although I did not classify that as travel writing, in the moment, that was what was most talked about in this medium. Although Mariana Starke did do an amazing job with her imagery, it made you feel as though I was put into this place myself. It did seem as though it was directed at the readers of England in the sense that she most likely had those people in mind as she herself was from England, I just thought it might be a little more beneficial to her international readers to write more broadly. As I know her book was successful all-around Europe and was in many famous booksellers, as per what her letter says. Although I am sure she did not determine her success in the process of writing, and that is why it comes off the way it does. Overall, this book is quite informative, not only to me as a reader now, but to readers who read it when it came out as well, it does an exceptionally good job at descriptions and information of what it is like to be in the places that she visited in Italy.