Spark, Muriel (1918-2006), was a Scottish author best known for her short novels. Spark filled her fiction with witty dialogue, eccentric characters, and unusual events. These elements are often humorous, but Spark used them to explore serious moral questions.
Spark’s best-known novel is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). The central character is Miss Brodie, a romantic, domineering teacher at a Scottish girls’ school. The analysis of this character reflects Spark’s interest in unusual personalities. The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) is one of Spark’s few long novels. Set in modern Jerusalem, its complex plot involves a large and diverse cast of characters. Spark’s other popular short novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote the political satire The Abbess of Crewe (1974) and the comic novels The Takeover (1976), A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), and The Finishing School (2004). Her short stories were collected in The Stories of Muriel Spark (1985) and Open to the Public (1997). A selection of Spark’s essays was published as The Golden Fleece in 2014, after her death.
Muriel Sarah Camberg was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Feb. 1, 1918. She married Sydney Oswald Spark, a teacher, in 1937. Spark converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1954. She often dealt with religious issues in her fiction. Spark wrote poetry, plays, children’s books, literary criticism, and Child of Light (1951), a biography of the English author Mary Shelley. Spark also edited the letters of several English writers of the 1800’s. Curriculum Vitae (1993) is her autobiography. In 1993, Queen Elizabeth II made Spark a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire, and she became known as Dame Muriel Spark. Spark died on April 13, 2006.
