Muriel Spark
(b. 1918)

Scottish writer Muriel Spark decided that she was a poet at age nine, when she rewrote a poem by Robert Browning in order to improve it. In 1952, she published her first book of poems, The Fanfarlo and Other Verse. Spark, however, is best known for her fiction, which she began writing after she won a short story contest in 1951 with her story "The Seraph and the Zambesi." Her first published novel was The Comforters (1957). Spark's 1954 conversion to Roman Catholicism figures prominently in The Comforters and in many of her novels, which include Memento Mori (1959), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), and her latest, Aiding and Abetting (2000).

Spark was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was educated at James Gillespie's School for Girls and Meriot-Watt College in Edinburgh. In 1937, Spark traveled to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to marry Sydney Oswald Spark, a teacher. In 1944, during World War II, she returned to England on a troop ship and then divorced Spark. Upon returning to England, she was conscripted into the Political Intelligence department of the British Foreign Office, where she wrote pro-British material. Following the war, Spark became the General Secretary of the Poetry Society and Editor of the Poetry Review.

Spark has lived in Africa, the United States, and Europe, and has traveled to the Middle East and India. She has received honorary degrees from the University of Strathclyde and the University of Edinburgh and many awards including the Boccaccio Europa prize for European Literature in 2002. In 1993, Sparks was made a Dame of the British Empire.

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z