Muriel Spark could never throw anything away for she was obsessed with written proof. In the 1940s she began keeping diaries, accounts and cheque books, and tens of thousands of letters. Today her vast archive is housed in the National Library of Scotland held in more than 50 metres of files that is still being catalogued. [1]
Muriel Spark was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist. Born in Edinburgh on 1 February 1918, Muriel Sarah Camberg was the daughter of Bernard Camberg, an engineer, and his wife, Sarah. Her Scottish father was Jewish, and her English mother had been raised Anglican. She had one brother, Philip, but they were never close, and keeping up appearances socially was vitally important in the family.
As a child, Muriel read voraciously and received a grammar school education at James Gillespie’s School for Girls, coming under the influence of a charismatic teacher, Christina Kay, who was later the model for Jean Brodie – “she entered my imagination immediately”, Muriel later recorded.
In 1937, aged 19, she travelled to Africa to marry Sidney Spark, 13 years her senior, whom she had met in Edinburgh. Their son Samuel Robin was born in 1938, but her husband was prone to violent outbursts and the marriage was not happy. In 1940 Muriel left the marriage, placed Robin in a convent school as children could not travel during the war, and returned to Britain in early 1944. Muriel provided money at regular intervals to support her son and maintained it was her intention to set up a home for him in England, but Robin later returned to Britain with his father to be brought up by his maternal grandparents in Scotland. Spark and her son had a strained relationship that lasted throughout their lives.
Muriel Spark was nearly 40 years old when she completed her first novel, The Comforters. The phenomenal success of her sixth novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ensured that she retains a popular appeal to this day. After gaining several literary prizes and academic awards, she is now widely considered one of the most engaging and tantalizing writers of her generation.
Spark died in Florence on 13 April 2006, of cancer, aged 88. She left behind twenty-two novels, poems and essays, biographies and journalism.