The Biography of Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark was born February 1, 1918, in Edinburgh, Scotland. She wrote poetry and worked at various editing jobs during the late 1930s and through the 1940s. In the mid-1950s, Spark became interested in Cardinal Newman’s writing on Catholicism, with an English Presbyterian mother and a jewish father, Spark felt somehow at a theological loss, Catholicism seemed to ofter her a spesific location or frame of reference, and she converted in 1954.
During the 1950s, Spark edited letters of the Brontes and co-edited letters of Mary Shelley and John Henry Newman. Her first novel, “ the Comportes ” appeared in 1957. Along with collections of short stories and poems, Spark published four more novels before she brought out her most famous novel, “ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie “, which first appeared in the New Yorker. This novel was published in England in 1961 and in the United States in 1962. Later, it was made into a play and then into a movie. Spark continued writing novels into the 1980s, often dealing with themes connected to religius conversation. Her 1981 novel, Loitering with Intent, deals with problems connected to autobiography and biography.
Muriel Spark lived in Central Africa during the years leading up to World War II. During that war, she resided in England and worked for the Foreign Office. Ultimately she settled in Italy. She was married and divorced and had one child, a son. Finally she was die April 13, 2006, in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.

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