author
Baroness Maria Stella Petronilla Ungern-Sternberg
1773–1843
An Italian-born memoirist with a life wrapped in mystery, she became famous for insisting that her true parentage had been hidden at birth. Her story moves through aristocratic circles, family scandal, and a long fight to prove who she believed she really was.
1 Audiobook
The Memoirs of Maria Stella (Lady Newborough)
by Baroness Maria Stella Petronilla Ungern-Sternberg
About the author
Born Maria Stella Chiappini in Modigliana on April 16, 1773, she later became known as Lady Newborough and, after a second marriage, Baroness Ungern-Sternberg. She is remembered chiefly for her memoirs and for the dramatic claim that she had been switched at birth and was in fact the daughter of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans.
That claim shaped much of her adult life. She pursued legal and public efforts to challenge the story of her birth, and the controversy around her identity made her a subject of lasting historical curiosity. Whether or not readers accept her case, it gave her writing an unusual tension: part personal remembrance, part argument for recognition.
Her best-known work is The Memoirs of Maria Stella (Lady Newborough), a book that blends autobiography with the larger social world of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. She died on December 23, 1843, leaving behind a life story that still feels stranger than fiction.