Muriel Spark
born
Feb. 1, 1918, Edinburgh, Scot.
died April 13, 2006, Florence, Italy
British writer best known for the satire and wit
with which the serious themes of her novels are
presented.
Spark was educated in Edinburgh and later spent
some years in Central Africa; the latter served
as the setting for her first volume of short
stories, The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories
(1958). She returned to Great Britain during
World War II and worked for the Foreign Office,
writing propaganda. She then served as general
secretary of the Poetry Society and editor of
The Poetry Review (1947–49). She later published
a series of critical biographies of literary
figures and editions of 19th-century letters,
including Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley (1951; rev. ed., Mary
Shelley, 1987), John Masefield (1953), and The
Brontė Letters (1954). Spark converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1954.
Until 1957 Spark published only criticism and
poetry. With the publication of The Comforters
(1957), however, her talent as a novelist—an
ability to create disturbing, compelling
characters and a disquieting sense of moral
ambiguity—was immediately evident. Her third
novel, Memento Mori (1959), was adapted for the
stage in 1964 and for television in 1992. Her
best-known novel is probably The Prime of Miss
Jean Brodie (1961), which centres on a
domineering teacher at a girls’ school. It also
became popular in its stage (1966) and film
(1969) versions.
Some critics found Spark’s earlier novels minor;
some of these works—such as The Comforters,
Memento Mori, The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960),
and The Girls of Slender Means (1963)—are
characterized by humorous and slightly
unsettling fantasy. The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
marked a departure toward weightier themes, and
the novels that followed—The Driver’s Seat
(1970, film 1974), Not to Disturb (1971), and
The Abbess of Crewe (1974)—have a distinctly
sinister tone. Among Spark’s later novels are
Territorial Rights (1979), A Far Cry from
Kensington (1988), Reality and Dreams (1996),
and The Finishing School (2004). Other works
include Collected Poems I (1967) and Collected
Stories (1967). Curriculum Vitae (1992) is an
autobiography. Spark was made Dame Commander of
the British Empire in 1993.
