Muriel Spark

When an unbridled schoolmistress with advanced ideas is in her prime, the classroom can take on a new identity, and no one can predict what will happen. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie introduces Jean Brodie, a teacher whose unconventional ideas put her at odds with the other members of staff at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh. She endeavours...

I can't help it. Sometimes the words just come out and I can't stop them. It feels like preaching the gospel. When publishing assistant and war widow Nancy Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he 'urinates frightful prose', the repercussions are swift. Losing not one, but two, much-sought-after literary jobs, Mrs Hawkins finds herself embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Muriel Spark claimed The Driver's Seat to be her best and creepiest novel. Once you have met her heroine Lise—heading for the holiday of a lifetime in an extraordinarily garish dress and with violence on her mind—you will understand why.

Romantic, heroic, comic, and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas, and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy – the 'crème de la crème' – who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a world of adult games they will never forget. The Prime...

At an Edinburgh school in the 1930s, glamorous, outspoken Miss Jean Brodie is quite certain of her role as teacher: to devote the wisdom of her prime years to six young girls, the crème de la crème, who will receive an education of the most unique kind. Known in school as the infamous Brodie set, the girls are soon entangled...

New to Modern Classics, published alongside The Ballad of Peckham Rye Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes...

New edition of the Penguin Essential featuring a schoolmistress you'll never forget... '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...

Remember you must die. Dame Lettie Colston is the first of her circle to receive insinuating anonymous phone calls. Neither she, nor her friends, wish to be reminded of their mortality, and their geriatric feathers are thoroughly ruffled. As the caller's activities become more widespread, old secrets are dusted off, exposing past and present duplicities, self-deception, and blackmail. Nobody is...

The first of two volumes of the letters of Muriel Spark, one of the greatest and most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.*One of the TLS Books of the Year 2025* In 1944, on her return to England after a disastrous marriage, Muriel Spark was unknown as a writer except to a handful of close friends; by 1963 she was...

Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she'll be mine for life. I am dedicated to you in my prime.' While Miss Brodie manipulates and charms 'her...

Two stars team up—Muriel Spark and Edward Gorey—to bring the charming tale of Ticky the clock to life in this children's classic. Once there was a very fine clock named Ticky, who lived with Professor Horace John Morris and kept perfect time. Each night, at fourteen minutes past ten, his time was used to set the rest of the clocks...

Muriel Spark's classic novel, widely hailed as one of the twentieth century's best—the story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special—and ultimately dangerous—relationship with six of her students. At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her...

From the grimly gothic Do Not Disturb to the razor-sharp dissection of manners in The Takeover and the mordantly brilliant The Only Problem, in a panoramic sweep taking in the shores of the Italian lakes to the castles of Geneva, Muriel Spark casts her unflinching gaze over the continent and onto some of the odder specimens of human nature abounding...

Spiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He's been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London's bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the 'cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books', The Bachelors is a biting comedy of English manners. This is one of the 22 novels written...

One of Muriel Spark's best-loved and greatest novels, now an Essential. London, 1945. The war is grinding to a halt, and the city begins to embrace the hordes who gather to hear the political speeches of the day. And in the tightly-knit world of a Kensington hostel, a bevy of well-bred girls of slender means and intriguing morals are leading...

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...

In Muriel Spark's novels, the brevity is only equalled by the brilliance. This collection of four stories, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrates her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Her most famous book, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, has been made into a play and a...

New to Modern Classics alongside Spark's The Drivers' Seat (ISBN- 0141188340). A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalise the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham...