Celebrating Muriel Spark Reading Week (Apr. 23-29)

Get in the Spark spirit by reading an excerpt from each of our Muriel Spark ebooks, including: Doctors of Philosophy, The Hothouse by the East River, The Mandelbaum Gate, The Only Problem, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Reality and Dreams, The Takeover, and Territorial Rights.

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.