About this item
Together for the first time in one sparkling, delicious volume, here are the greatest essays of Muriel Spark A fantastic essayist, the inimitable Muriel Spark addresses here the writing life; love; cats; favorite writers (T. S. Eliot, Robert Burns, the Bronts, Mary Shelley); Piero della Francesca; life in wartime London and in glamorous "Hollywood-on-the-Tiber;" 1960s Rome; faith; and parties (on her first New Year's Eve, as a baby sipping her mother's sherry: "I always loved a party").Spark's scope is amazing, and her striking, glancing insights are precise and unforgettable. From the mysteries of Job's sufferings, she glides to Dame Edith Sitwell's cocktail advice about how to handle a nasty publisher, and on to the joys of success.
About the Author
Muriel Spark (1918-2006) was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) , considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film. Spark became a Dame of the British Empire in 1993.
