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 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...
Reception
Emily Brontë
Muriel Spark
vigorously promoted the work of the Brontës in the mid twentieth century, and Winifred Gérin
was another important early biographer. Later in the century, J. Hillis Miller
provided an influential deconstructive reading of...
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...
Textual Features
Caroline Blackwood
Critic Val Warner
called CB
a unique voice in twentieth-century British fiction.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.