Muriel Spark

'One of her funniest novels . . . Spark at her sharpest, her purest and her most merciful' ALI SMITHIn The Finishing School Muriel Spark is once again at her biting, satirical best. On the edge of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, a struggling would-be novelist and his wife run a finishing school of questionable reputation to keep the funds flowing. When a seventeen-year-old student's writing career begins to show great promise, tensions run high. A keen portrait of devouring regret, psychological unravelling and the glittering promise of youth, The Finishing School is the perfect natural partner to Muriel Spark's most famous novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery.'It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title - almost the only men we meet in the narrative - are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, journalists and museum attendants of a small patch of West London. They lead inturned, doddery, superannuated lives, pottering between grocers, coffee-houses, bedsits and the houses of their mothers and aunts. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh's satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are . . . comedies of English manners have seldom been darker' Daily Telegraph'My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème' Ian Rankin'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive' John Updike, New Yorker

In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, 'Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write "poetic" prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet.' Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for the telling detail, her command of poetic forms and her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse. Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

"Gi meg en pike i mottakelig alder, og hun er min for alltid." Frøken Jean Brodie er læreren man aldri glemmer - ikke som leser, eller om man var en av hennes elever på pikeskolen i Edinburgh på 1930-tallet. Frøken Brodie er en lidenskapelig, uforutsigbar og fritenkende kvinne med høye idealer, sterke meninger og uortodokse undervisningsmetoder. Pikene er rundt ti år når hun får ansvaret for dem. Hun gir dem fortellinger om store menn og kvinner i kunsten og historien, og om begivenheter i hennes eget kjærlighetsliv. De blir til Brodie-klikken, crème de la crème, hevet over andre elever og skolens tradisjonelle pensum. Hver og en er noe helt spesielt, blir de fortalt, og skal bli berømt for dette - Monica for matematikken, Eunice for svømmingen, Rose for sex. Men en dag, bare noen år frem i tid, vil en av pikene i klikken forråde frøken Brodie, til hennes store overraskelse og fortvilelse. "Frøken Jean Brodies beste alder" er en moderne klassiker - et komisk mesterverk med en av litteraturhistoriens mest uforglemmelige skikkelser.

First published by Peter Owen in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems. Perceptively but unsentimentally, Spark considers the Brontes' lives and works, including their generally disastrous attempts at teaching, and reflects on her own fascination, as a writer and a reader, with Emily Bronte and with 'the immortal Wuthering Heights and its nightmare hero'. This edition features a new foreword by Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor at the Independent.

This package includes these eight Muriel Spark novels: The Comforters, Memento Mori, The Driver's Seat, Territorial Rights, Loitering with Intent, The Bachelors, A Far Cry from Kensington, and The Ballad of Peckham Rye

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs, the cozy bachelors (as any Spark reader might guess) are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented -- defrauded or stolen from, blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid seances -- and then plunged into the nastiest of lawsuits.

A fantastic essayist, the inimitable Muriel Spark addresses here the writing life; love; cats; favorite writers (T. S. Eliot, Robert Burns, the Brontes, Mary Shelley); Piero della Francesca; life in wartime London and in glamorous "Hollywood-on-the-Tiber;" 1960s Rome; faith; and parties (on her first New Year's Eve, as a baby sipping her mother's sherry: "I always loved a party"). Spark's scope is amazing, and her striking, glancing insights are precise and unforgettable. From the mysteries of Job's sufferings, she glides to Dame Edith Sitwell's cocktail advice about how to handle a nasty publisher, and on to the joys of success.

The essays, reviews, memoirs and other writings collected here for the first time conjure up one of the great critical imaginations of our time. Grouped into four sections (Art and Poetry; Autobiography and Travel; Literature; and Religion, Politics and Philosophy), they demonstrate the wide range of Muriel Spark's knowledge and interests, and throw into relief the people, places and ideas that inspired her throughout her life as a working writer. The book includes perceptive essays on literary figures including the Brontes, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Robert Louis Stevenson; engaging accounts of visits to John Masefield, Edith Sitwell, and Louis MacNeice's home (in the absence of its owner); and reflections on the sermons of Cardinal Newman and the Old Testament book of Job as perennially rich sources of spiritual nourishment. The novelist's eye for the telling detail is evident in portraits of the cities - Venice, Rome, Ravenna, Istanbul - which Muriel Spark visited or in which she made her home. As Penelope Jardine puts it in her preface, this book 'tells many things'.

Witty yet elegant, Territorial Rights is a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera.

First published in 1968 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Public Image couldn't be more relevant for today's celebrity-obsessed culture. This is Spark at her wittiest, wickedest best.

På en flickskola i mellankrigstidens Edinburgh samlar Miss Jean Brodie en frigjord, passionerad och högst målmedveten lärarinna en skara noggrant handplockade elever: de allra, allra bästa, hennes flickor, Brodies gäng. De mer konventionella skolämnena får ge vika för kärlek, politik och konst, och Miss Jean Brodie gör allt för att forma flickorna till starka och oberoende kvinnor. Samtidigt har hon kärleksaffärer med två av skolans manliga lärare, varav den ena är gift. »Tryggheten är inte det viktigaste«, manar hon sina elever. »Godhet, Sanning och Skönhet är det viktigaste. Följ mig.« Och det gör de. Men en av flickorna ska komma att förråda henne. I översättning av Ingeborg von Rosen och med ett förord av Andres Lokko. MURIEL SPARK [1918 -2006] är en skotsk romanförfattare och poet vars produktiva författarskap tillhör de verkligt säregna och betydande från det brittiska 1900-talets andra hälft. Romanen Miss Jean Brodies bästa år [The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961] blev hennes stora genombrott och är fortfarande hennes mest lästa och omtyckta bok.

Beautifully packaged reissue of one of Muriel Spark's best loved novels, The Girls of Slender Means'Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions'In the May of Teck Club - a London hostel 'three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit' - the young lady residents do their best to act as if the war never happened. They practice elocution, and jostle one another over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. But behind the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations they hide some tragically painful secrets and wounds.'You girls are my vocation . . . I am dedicated to you in my prime''Reading the novel as a young woman was a random gift; rereading it today is to encounter the rarest of fiction and to appreciate the early and enduring genius of Muriel Spark' Carol Shields, Guardian'One of Spark's most evocative novels' Anne TaylorMuriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.

'One of the greatest books about growing up' James Wood, Guardian'You girls are my vocation . . . I am dedicated to you in my prime'Miss Jean Brodie is a schoolmistress with a difference. She is proud, cultured and romantic but her educational ideas are highly progressive and even deeply shocking. So when she decides to transform a group of 'special girls' into the crème de la crème at Marcia Blaine School they are soon known, perhaps suspiciously, as the Brodie set. Introduced to an unsettling world of adult games and curious intrigues, the Brodie Set know that they are privileged. Yet there is a price to pay - they must give Miss Brodie their undivided loyalty . . .'The most gifted and innovative British novelist of her generation' David Lodge, The New York Times'Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards' John Updike, New Yorker

På en flickskola i mellankrigstidens Edinburgh samlar Miss Jean Brodie en frigjord, passionerad och högst målmedveten lärarinna en skara noggrant handplockade elever: de allra, allra bästa, hennes flickor, Brodies gäng. De mer konventionella skolämnena får ge vika för kärlek, politik och konst, och Miss Jean Brodie gör allt för att forma flickorna till starka och oberoende kvinnor. Samtidigt har hon kärleksaffärer med två av skolans manliga lärare, varav den ena är gift. »Tryggheten är inte det viktigaste«, manar hon sina elever. »Godhet, Sanning och Skönhet är det viktigaste. Följ mig.« Och det gör de. Men en av flickorna ska komma att förråda henne. I översättning av Ingeborg von Rosen och med ett förord av Andres Lokko. MURIEL SPARK [1918-2006] är en skotsk romanförfattare och poet vars produktiva författarskap tillhör de verkligt säregna och betydande från det brittiska 1900-talets andra hälft. Romanen Miss Jean Brodies bästa år [The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961] blev hennes stora genombrott och är fortfarande hennes mest lästa och omtyckta bok.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women SelectionMuriel Spark's classic The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie features a schoolmistress you'll never forget, in this beautifully repackaged Penguin Essentials edition.'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life . . .'Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the crème de la crème, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty . . . The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature.'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards' John Updike'Spark's most celebrated novel' Independent'There is no question about the quality and distinctiveness of her writing, with its quirky concern with human nature, and its comedy' William Boyd'A brilliant psychological figure' ObserverMuriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.

The Letters of the Brontes: A Selection is a collection of letters written by the famous Bronte siblings - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne - to each other and to other family members and friends. These letters provide a unique insight into the lives and personalities of the Brontes, as well as the social and cultural context of their time. The letters cover a wide range of topics, from everyday events and family gossip to discussions of literature and philosophy. They also reveal the close bond between the siblings and their deep affection for each other, as well as their struggles with illness, poverty, and personal loss. The book includes an introduction by the editor, Juliet Barker, which provides background information on the Bronte family and their literary achievements. It also includes notes and annotations to help readers understand the historical and cultural references in the letters. Overall, The Letters of the Brontes: A Selection is a fascinating and revealing glimpse into the lives of one of the most famous literary families in history. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the Brontes, their work, and the social and cultural context of the Victorian era. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

My Best Mary: The Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is a collection of personal letters written by the famous author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, edited by Betty T. Bennett. This book offers a glimpse into Shelley's private life and reveals her thoughts, feelings, and experiences through her correspondence with family, friends, and literary figures. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including her relationships with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, her struggles with depression and grief, her travels across Europe, and her literary pursuits. The book also includes a detailed introduction by the editor, providing context and background information on Shelley's life and work. Overall, My Best Mary provides a fascinating insight into the life and mind of one of the most celebrated writers of the Romantic era. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.