Mastodawn

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

THAT PROMETHEAN SPARK
The Bottle Imp – Muriel Spark special issue

Muriel Spark was born #OTD, 1 Feb, 1918

“With a writing career that included biography, criticism, drama and short fiction as well as novels, Muriel Spark was never one to do things by halves…”

A 🎂 🧵

1/18

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2017/11/that-promethian-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

That Promethean Spark - The Bottle Imp

In some ways the most real and rooted people whom Sandy knew were Miss Gaunt and the Kerr sisters who made no evasions about their belief that God had planned for practically everybody before they were born a nasty surprise when they died. Later, when Sandy read John Calvin, she found that although popular conceptions […]

The Bottle Imp

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Ridicule is the only honourable weapon we have left”

—Muriel Spark, from her 1970 speech “The Desegregation of Art”, given at the American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York – in THE INTERNATIONAL COMPANION TO THE SCOTTISH NOVEL, ed. Cairns Craig (2025)

2/18

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/companions/ic10/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #satire #ridicule

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Her books are a piercing reminder of how extreme politics can appeal to the sanest-seeming people – & that half-truths & malfeasance are as intrinsic to human nature as breathing”

—The Economist on the continuing relevance of Muriel Spark’s fiction

3/18

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/07/19/muriel-spark-is-a-bard-of-nastiness-and-lies

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #extremism

Muriel Spark is a bard of nastiness and lies

On her centenary, her fiction is more relevant than ever

The Economist

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie

“In a novel published thirty years after the 1930s, Spark… criticises the inefficiency of public education in its exposure of the tyrannical leaders’ hypocrisy.”

—Kaiyue He looks at what lessons we can learn from Muriel Spark

4/18

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/07/teaching-tyranny-the-crime-of-miss-jean-brodie/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #tyranny

Teaching Tyranny: The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie - The Bottle Imp

Muriel Spark’s most celebrated work is set entirely in her hometown of Edinburgh. The Marcia Blaine School in the novel is modelled on James Gillespie’s, which Spark attended from the age of eleven, while the protagonist, Jean Brodie, bears some resemblance to Spark’s former teacher Miss Christina Kay, who, in Spark’s words, was a ‘character […]

The Bottle Imp

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Spark had just passed on to me an unexpected gift: the gift of the future. I’m beginning to think her books are themselves a kind of fruitfulness.”

—Ali Smith on how Muriel Spark gives us the gift of the future

5/18

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/29/ali-smith-on-muriel-spark-at-100

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #AliSmith

‘Vital, witty, formidably blithe’: Ali Smith on Muriel Spark at 100

Spark shone a light on her times, and ours. In the week of her centenary, her fellow Scottish novelist celebrates a writer who gave us the gift of the future

The Guardian

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Muriel Spark gave me a new model for a feminist hero […] It was about loitering—about the quiet subversiveness of simply existing in public as a woman.”

—Beth Jellicoe on Muriel Spark’s LOITERING WITH INTENT

6/18

https://electricliterature.com/sometimes-the-most-feminist-thing-you-can-do-is-exist-as-a-woman-in-public/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #feminism

Sometimes the Most Feminist Thing You Can Do Is Exist as a Woman in Public - Electric Literature

Novel Gazing is Electric Literature’s personal essay series about the way reading shapes our lives. This time, we asked: What book was your feminist awakening? I first read Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent on the steps of a pub terrace in Forest Hill, South London. I’d just finished university final exams, was in London for […]

Electric Literature

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“What hash Spark’s characters make of those eternal debates over unlikable characters or unlikable women. These women aren’t unlikable, these women are monstrous… Spark looks at her women like a wolf.”

—Parul Sehgal on Muriel Spark, for the New Yorker

7/18

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-muriel-spark-saw

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

What Muriel Spark Saw

Spark was fascinated by an active, robust kind of suffering, whereby hunger whetted one’s wits.

The New Yorker

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Spark’s African experiences clearly had a profound effect on her artistic vision. They made her a keen observer, taught her the value of silence, and gave her an insight into a world of casual cruelty”

—Prof Willy Maley on Muriel Spark & Africa

8/18

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-authors/muriel-spark-and-africa

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #Africa #colonialism

Muriel Spark and Africa

Professor Willy Maley explores Muriel Spark's relationship with the continent of Africa

Scottish Book Trust

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Spark thrived in institutions. This is because, like Miss Brodie, she was a conservative anarchist”

Frances Wilson on the similarities between Muriel Spark’s favourite teacher & her most famous protagonist – via @literaryhub

9/18

https://lithub.com/behind-the-fame-and-inspirations-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

Behind the Fame (and Inspirations) of Muriel Spark

“Perhaps no other life could have been as rich as that first life,” Spark recalled in Curriculum Vitae, “when, five years old, prepared and briefed to my full capacity, I was ready for school.” Jam…

Literary Hub

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

‘[Muriel Spark] observes … “Some of [Burns’s] most successful love songs present the girl’s point of view” … citing the bawdy verse “Wha’ll mow me now”, she comments drily: “If this is difficult to decipher, a little imagination will serve the purpose”’

10/18
https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-authors/muriel-spark-burns-bright-on-burns-night

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #RobertBurns

Muriel Spark burns bright on Burns Night

Professor Willy Maley outlines how Muriel Spark was influenced by Robert Burns. Originally published Tuesday 23 January 2018

Scottish Book Trust

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

The Edinburgh & Borders of Sir Walter Scott & Muriel Spark

Prof Gerry Carruthers in 2024, looking at how both Walter Scott & Muriel Spark engage with the ideas of the Borders & of Edinburgh – reflecting the wider complexity of Scotland, the world & the human condition

11/18

https://youtu.be/rZit4cibGds?si=5GccyWk4p7V4Xb6Q

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #WalterScott #Borders #Edinburgh

Prof. Gerry Carruthers - The Edinburgh and Borders of Sir Walter Scott and Muriel Spark

YouTube

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

Scottish Scholars & Secrets: Developments of Dark Academia in Edinburgh

Natasha Anderson finds roots of Dark Academia running through Edinburgh’s gothic literary traditions, in works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark, & Ian Rankin

12/18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpagiSHK78

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #gothic #DarkAcademia #RobertLouisStevenson #IanRankin #Edinburgh

Reading Scotland with Natasha Anderson

YouTube

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“Somehow things happened, odd things, when Muriel was around,” recalled her friend Shirley Hazzard. “Everything that happened to Muriel,” according to … Barbara Epler, “had been foreseen”, usually in her books themselves.

—The unnerving vision of Muriel Spark

13/18

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jun/15/odd-things-happened-when-she-was-around-novelist-muriel-spark

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

‘Odd things happened when she was around’: the unnerving vision of Muriel Spark

From blackmail to burglary, the events of Spark’s life often uncannily echoed those of her novels – no wonder the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie believed she could predict the future

The Guardian

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians.”

—extracts from A GOOD COMB, by Muriel Spark, ed. Penelope Jardine – via @literaryhub

14/18

https://lithub.com/a-few-words-of-indispensible-advice-from-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #advice #Paris

A Few Words of Indispensable Advice from Muriel Spark

The following is a list of advice culled from Muriel Spark’s fiction and collected in A Good Comb (New Directions). As editor Penelope Jardine puts it in the introduction: The words are not g…

Literary Hub

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

“knowing the challenges Spark overcame makes me doubly grateful for her”

Writing for the Royal Literary Fund, Lauren J. Joseph reflects on a quality many writers have to develop – the “sheer bloody-mindedness” Spark had in spades

15/18

https://www.rlf.org.uk/posts/the-relentless-brilliance-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #writing

The relentless brilliance of Muriel Spark

Lauren J. Joseph on Muriel Spark, who applied to the RLF for a grant in 1950, seven years before the publication of her first novel.

Royal Literary Fund

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

AFTERWORDS: Muriel Spark
“One’s prime is elusive…”

—On BBC Sounds: writers Ian Rankin & Zoë Strachan discuss Muriel Spark’s life & work with National Library of Scotland curator Colin McIlroy, & Spark’s friend & memoirist, Alan Taylor

16/18

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018238

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Afterwords: Muriel Spark

Reflections on the work of Muriel Spark, through archive of the author and new interviews.

BBC

Assoc for Scottish Literature

THE CROOKED DIVIDEND
Essays on Muriel Spark
ed. Gerard Carruthers & Helen Stoddart

Muriel Spark in British culture; the influence of Scottish literary traditions on her work; how she explores gender, religion, politics; & more

Also online via Project MUSE

17/18

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/occasional_papers/the-crooked-dividend/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters

Assoc for Scottish Literature Feb 1

I think that authors’ ghosts creep back‍‍
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves‍‍
And find the books they wrote.‍‍
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,‍‍
Sometimes whole paragraphs.‍‍
Whole pages are added, re-written, revised…

—Muriel Spark, “Authors’ Ghosts”
published in COMPLETE POEMS (Carcanet, 2015)

18/18

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #poem #poetry