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.
The author of twelve novels (ranging from political thrillers through social satire, comedy of manners, and near-gothic), still at the height of her career, HM
has been likened to Muriel Spark
or Edna O'Brien
for...
Occupation
Rumer Godden
While living in Highgate RG
took to organizing readings: at Foyles
bookshop, promoting young poets; at Kenwood House; and for the Arts Council
, where she spent two years on the Poetry Panel...
Occupation
Rebecca West
The prize went to P. H. Newby
's Something to Answer For, which according to Kermode years later was a compromise decision. Dame Rebecca didn't dislike it as much as nearly all the others...
Material Conditions of Writing
Christine Brooke-Rose
The revision of this novel was done partly at the home of Muriel Spark
and Penelope Jardine
in Tuscany. Spark, who had just met Brooke-Rose again after years out of touch, helped her search...
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
Christine Brooke-Rose
The book was not well received, because of what was felt to be its misanthropic spleen.
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press.
42
It was roughly treated, for instance, on a tv discussion programme. CBR
remained dissatisfied with her first...
Literary responses
Mary Webb
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...
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...
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.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins
characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
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...
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.
86, 93-4
In her years alone she became very fond of...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Evelyn Waugh
He counted among his friends Graham Greene
and his fellow comic novelists Nancy Mitford
and Muriel Spark
.