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.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
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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...
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...
Education
Ali Smith
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...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Spark, Muriel. The Very Fine Clock. Macmillan, 1968.
Spark, Muriel, and Derek Stanford, editors. Tribute to Wordsworth: A Miscellany of Opinion for the Centenary of the Poet’s Death. Wingate, 1950.