Muriel Spark

01 February 1918 - 13 April 2006

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.

Spark, Muriel. Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography. Constable.

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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.

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Connections

Connections	Author name Sort descending	Excerpt
Textual Production	Jackie Kay	JK was one of twenty Scottish authors invited to contribute a monologue to a collaborative work entitled Dear Scotland, which was first performed by the Scottish National Theatre on 24 April 2014 as a...
Textual Features	Doris Lessing	Her topics range from cats to Sufism and censorship and from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf to Anna Kavan and Muriel Spark .
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
Author summary	Hilary Mantel	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...
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...
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...
Textual Production	Kathleen Nott	The Hand and Flower Press , run by Marx from 1940 until 1966, began with limited editions of books by admired authors, and moved on to works, especially poetry, by largely unpublished writers, including...
Textual Features	Michèle Roberts	In her early story Une Glossaire (in English A Glossary, collected in During Mother's Absence), MRwrites about her French childhood under headings such as Beurre, Moisson, and Grandpere. Wilkinson, Margaret. “The Blank Page”. Mslexia, No. 9, p. 13. 13
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...
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...
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...
Textual Production	Ali Smith	In addition to these collaborative works, AS has published an anthology of her own favourite texts, those she sees as essential to her development as a writer. Published twice under different titles—The Reader (2006)...
Textual Production	Ali Smith	With her background in academia and her work reviewing fiction for The Scotsman and The Guardian, AS has produced an impressive amount of literary criticism. She has written critical introductions for reissues of work...
Friends, Associates	Evelyn Waugh	He counted among his friends Graham Greene and his fellow comic novelists Nancy Mitford and Muriel Spark .
Publishing	Evelyn Waugh	Throughout his career EW published essays and reviews. The latter include a warm and thoughtful welcome in The Spectator for Muriel Spark 's The Comforters, 1957, and he went on to provide quotable phrases...

Timeline

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Texts

Spark, Muriel. Robinson. Macmillan, 1958.

Spark, Muriel. Robinson. Penguin, 1964.

Spark, Muriel. Symposium. Constable, 1990.

Spark, Muriel. Territorial Rights. Macmillan, 1979.

Spark, Muriel. The Abbess of Crewe. Macmillan, 1974.

Spark, Muriel. The Bachelors. Macmillan, 1960.

Spark, Muriel. The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Macmillan, 1960.

Spark, Muriel. The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Macmillan, 1965.

Spark, Muriel, editor. The Brontë Letters. Nevill, 1954.

Spark, Muriel. The Comforters. Macmillan, 1957.

Spark, Muriel. The Driver’s Seat. Macmillan, 1970.

Spark, Muriel. The Fanfarlo and Other Verse. Hand and Flower Press, 1952.

Spark, Muriel. The French Window. Macmillan, 1970.

Spark, Muriel. The Girls of Slender Means. Macmillan, 1963.

Spark, Muriel. The Go-Away Bird with Other Stories. Macmillan, 1958.

Spark, Muriel. The Hothouse by the East River. Macmillan, 1973.

Spark, Muriel. The Hothouse by the East River. Penguin, 1975.

Spark, Muriel. The Mandelbaum Gate. Macmillan, 1965.

Spark, Muriel. The Only Problem. First Edition Society, Franklin Library, 1984.

Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Macmillan, 1961.

Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. J. B. Lippincott, 1962.

Spark, Muriel. The Public Image. Macmillan, 1968.

Spark, Muriel. “The Seraph and the Zambesi”. The Observer Prize Stories: The Seraph and the Zambesi, and Twenty Others, Observer, 1952, pp. 1-12.

Spark, Muriel. The Stories of Muriel Spark. Dutton, 1985.

Spark, Muriel. The Takeover. Macmillan, 1976.