Mariana Starke deserves recognition as an exemplary proto-feminist writer; her Travels on the Continent, written for the use and particular information of travellers (1820), may accurately be described as the first modern travel guide. She wrote for the new class of affluent British middle-class travellers to continental Europe in the early nineteenth century, who participated at the beginning of the ‘Golden Age’ of cultural heritage tourism with specific interests in recent archeological discoveries. Starke’s Travels and the later Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent (1824) signalled a change in women’s travel writing from the feminine epistolatory, personal and impressionistic style represented by her earlier Letters from Italy (1800) to the more masculine, impersonal style of the modern guidebook. Distinguishing features of her work include maps, archeological plan sites, practical information indicating the introduction of the feminine gaze, advice on how to live a healthier life, and ‘daggers of admiration’, serving as an assessment tool measuring the value of artworks, or the quality of food and lodging. Starke’s guidebooks were so highly respected that her publisher, John Murray II, unscrupulously plagiarised her work in Murray’s Handbooks, and then Karl Baedeker’s Baedekers Guide Books copied.