Muriel Spark
- Name : Spark
- Born : 1918
- Died :
- Category : Writers
- Finest Moment : Publication of Memento Mori (1959)
Born in Edinburgh, Muriel Spark was educated at James Gillespie's School for Girls and Heriot-Watt College. She spent the Second World War working in the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department. A clever, sometimes amusing writer, Spark converted to Catholicism in 1954, and allowed this to filter through to some of her novels, such as The Comforters (1957), The bachelors (1960), and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960).
Probably best known to the mass of people for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), a portrait of a highly individual and influential teacher at an Edinburgh girls' school between the wars, her writing, when put under the microscope, is callous, rather than compassionate, with surface attractiveness.