Muriel Spark - Writing Career

Writing Career

Spark began writing seriously after the war, under her married name, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947 she became editor of the Poetry Review. In 1954 she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, which she considered crucial in her development toward becoming a novelist. Penelope Fitzgerald, a fellow novelist and contemporary of Spark, wrote that Spark "had pointed out that it wasn't until she became a Roman Catholic... that she was able to see human existence as a whole, as a novelist needs to do." In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing: "I was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Can I write a novel about that — would it be foolish, wouldn't it be? And somehow with my religion — whether one has anything to do with the other, I don't know — but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence…" Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh supported her in her decision.

Between 1955 and 1965 she lived in a bedsit at 13 Baldwin Crescent, Camberwell, south-east London. Her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1957. It featured several references to Catholicism and conversion to Catholicism, although its main theme revolved around a young woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) was more successful. Spark displayed originality of subject and tone, making extensive use of flashforwards and imagined conversations. It is clear that James Gillespie's High School was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in the novel.

After living in New York City for some years, she moved to Rome, where she met artist and sculptor Penelope Jardine in 1968. In the early 1970s they settled in Tuscany, in the village of Civitella della Chiana, of which in 2005 Spark was made an honorary citizen. She was the subject of frequent rumours of lesbian relationships from her time in New York onwards, although Spark and her friends denied their validity. She left her entire estate to Jardine, taking measures to ensure that her son receive nothing.

Spark refused permission to publish a biography of her written by Martin Stannard. Penelope Jardine now holds publication approval rights, and the book was published in July 2009. On 27 July 2009 Stannard was interviewed on Front Row, the BBC Radio 4 arts programme. According to A. S. Byatt, "She was very upset by the book and had to spend a lot of time going through it, line by line, to try to make it a little bit fairer".

Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the US Ingersoll Foundation T. S. Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 2010 Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.