Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Muriel Spark
-
Standard Name: Spark, Muriel
Birth Name: Muriel Sarah Camberg
Nickname: Sparklet
Married Name: Muriel Sarah Spark
Pseudonym: Aquarius
The publishing career of MS
spanned the later twentieth century, extending beyond each end of that fifty-year period. She began writing as a poet, and went on to short fiction, literary criticism, biography, journalism, and drama. Having come to prose fiction through narrative poetry, she only gradually came to take the novel genre seriously.
She is, however, best known for her twenty-three novels, and especially for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961. She experimented with the longer novel, but her critical and commercial success came with shorter works. She said she preferred minor novels, in which she could explore precisely defined subjects within clear formal boundaries.
"Muriel Spark" by Carl Mydans,1965-01-01.Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-scottish-author-muriel-spark-as-she-poses-at-a-news-photo/174524529.
Under her Aberdeen advisor, Isobel Murray
, AS
produced a thesis chronicling the history of Scottish fiction from the Kailyard School of the late nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Named Transfiguration of the Commonplace...
Education
Ali Smith
Of all the experiences in her university career, AS
specifically names readings at Aberdeen by eminent Scottish writers Alasdair Gray
, Jim Kelman
, and Liz Lochhead
as having the kind of vibrancy that splits...
Friends, Associates
Graham Greene
Personal friends who were Catholics or converted to that faith during the course of their friendships with Greene included Muriel Spark
, Antonia White
and the future writer Mary Wesley
.
Friends, Associates
Evelyn Waugh
He counted among his friends Graham Greene
and his fellow comic novelists Nancy Mitford
and Muriel Spark
.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press, 2002.
42
also worked in intelligence during the war. Brooke-Rose later helped her by looking over and correcting French translations of Spark's works. Another early friend...
Intertextuality and Influence
Hilary Mantel
At her selective convent school school Carmel McBain is thrown closely together with Karina (child of East European immigrant parents), because they are the only two children at the school from poor homes beyond its...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ali Smith
In Perfect, a guest and hotal reviewer, Penny, is assailed with misperceptions and lack of recognition. After helping a mysterious young woman (who turns out to be Sara's sister, Clare) to pry the cover...
Leisure and Society
Ivy Compton-Burnett
ICB
was scathing about the work of some younger novelists, like Iris Murdoch
and Muriel Spark
(though she took Murdoch more seriously than Spark).
Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen, 1986.
86, 93-4
In her years alone she became very fond of...
Literary responses
Christine Brooke-Rose
The book was not well received, because of what was felt to be its misanthropic spleen.
qtd. in
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press, 1994.
42
It was roughly treated, for instance, on a tv discussion programme. CBR
remained dissatisfied with her first...
Literary responses
Jeanette Winterson
Reviewers in the Washington Post Book World, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Times Literary Supplement, the Scotsman, and The Times all acclaimed this novel; Muriel Spark
termed Winterson a fresh voice...
MW
's friend Caradoc Evans
(who called her the greatest living woman novelist and understood how hungry she was for success) recorded her envy of an unnamed countryside woman novelist who was savouring her own...
Literary responses
Hilary Mantel
Lindsay Duguid
in the Times Literary Supplementlocated Fludd in the tradition of Muriel Spark
and called it [s]erious without being pious, satirical without being trivial, and always forgiving . . . . both funny...
Literary responses
Hilary Mantel
HM
already features in critical surveys of the modern British novel, such as that by Nick Rennison
, 2004. A. S. Byatt
discusses her (among writers of both sexes including predecessors Elizabeth Bowen
and Muriel Spark
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bowen
Glendinning writes: She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf
with Iris Murdoch
and Muriel Spark
.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins
characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
Timeline
1797: James Gillespie, Edinburgh bachelor and self-made...
Building item
1797
James Gillespie
, Edinburgh bachelor and self-made snuff merchant, left money at his death to found a day school for poor boys, later for boys and girls.
“Companions of Literature”. Royal Society of Literature.
Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 23rd ed., Ward, Lock, 1904.
21 February 1924: The first issue appeared of the New Yorker...
Writing climate item
21 February 1924
The first issue appeared of the New Yorker magazine (still going strong in the twenty-first century).
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
21 February 2011
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 2, 23 Jan. 2014, pp. 33-5.
33
1962: Publisher John Calder and writer's widow...
Writing climate item
1962
Publisher John Calder
and writer's widow Sonia Orwell
together organised at Edinburgh the first, highly successful Writers' Conference.
Drabble, Margaret. “Pressure to Perform”. The Author, Vol.
cxii
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2001, pp. 162-4.
162
30 May 1967: Colonel Emeka Ojukwu of Eastern Nigeria made...
National or international item
30 May 1967
Colonel Emeka Ojukwu
of Eastern Nigeria made a unilateral declaration of independence on the part of the Ibo people, which set up the Republic of Biafra.
“Biafra: Thirty years on, 13 January 2000”. BBC News.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(13 November 1968): 11
April 2005: The poet Fiona Sampson took up the position...
Writing climate item
April 2005
The poet Fiona Sampson
took up the position of editor of Poetry Review (published by the Poetry Society
)—the first woman to hold this post since Muriel Spark
more than forty years before.
“All change at Poetry ReviewMslexia, No. 25, Apr. 2005, p. 11.
11
8 May 2008: Virago Press marked thirty years of Virago...