We are celebrating our 35th Anniversary Year! 

47 Muriel Spark items below include, all complete and in very good condition.   

The original 1961 appearance of Muriel Sparks' The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and 45 other periodicals (the Times Literary Supplement and others) with works spanning 1952-2025 by and about the Scottish novelist and poet. 

A lovely first American hardcover edition of her 1963 novel, in a dust wrapper, The Girls of Slender Means published by Knopf in New York. See photo #21.  
  
Recurrence: A Quarterly of Rhyme (Los Angeles) for Autumn 1952. Hard to find item, edited by Grover Jacoby, includes a new poem by Spark headed Day of Rest. See photos #15-16. 

Encounter (London) for September 1958. Isabel Quigly reviews Sparks' second novel, Robinson (shorter).  

The Yale Review for Winter 1959. Martin Price provides some first-rate analysis in enthusiastic review of Sparks' new novel Robinson (Lippincott). Lovely copy. 

The Yale Review for Summer 1959. Martin Price reviews Spark's new novel, Memento Mori (Lippincott). Chip to the corner of the front paper wrapper, otherwise a nice copy. 

The New Yorker for 14 October 1961. This number offers the first appearance in print of Sparks' The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The extended length story is printed on 109 pages of the weekly, about half of the issue. A very good copy with a faint crease to the front cover and a bit of soil to the paper wrappers. Nice and clean text. See photos #11 and #12. See also "2024" below and photo #14. 

The Partisan Review for Winter 1966. Spark heads a list of contributors headed "Scenes from a Play" ("Doctors of Philosophy"). See photo #13.  

The New Yorker for 16 May 1970. Spark offers her new novella, here first printed (covering 64 pages of the weekly), "The Driver's Seat." It appears here as the film "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," starring Maggie Smith, who won an Oscar for her role, is playing at two New York movie theatres. A complete, very good copy.   

WITH

Unless otherwise noted, the following Spark items are from the Times Literary Supplement (London). 

15 November 1974. Gabriele Annan here reviews Spark's novel The Abbess of Crewe and of Peter Kemp's Muriel Spark. 

The Yale Review for Summer 1975. Patricia Meyer Spacks reviews Spark's The Abbess of Crewe (Viking). 

4 June 1976. The able novelist and critic David Lodge here pens a review of Spark's new novel, The Takeover, her first full-length novel since 1965. 

7 December 1979. Headed a "Popish Plot" Patricia Beer here contributes a review of Spark's new novel (her 15th), Territorial Rights.  

22 May 1981. Jeremy Treglown here pens an essay in review of another new novel by Spark, her 16th, Loitering with Intent. It's headed "A Literary Life." 

The New York Review of Books for 25 June 1981. The able Robert Towers reviews (longer) Sparks' Loitering with Intent. The New York heading reads "Comic Schemes." 
7 September 1984. Headed "On the Side of Job," Gabriel Josipovici pens 3/4 of a full oversize page in review of Spark's The Only Problem. "Muriel Spark's novels are a joy to read and a nightmare to talk about." See photo #9. 

18-24 March 1988. Patricia Craig (noted on cover) here reviews Spark's 18th novel, A Far Cry from Kensington. It's headed "Taking a Stand with Aplomb." 

24 July 1992. This number features an essay, headed "Truth's Own Dear Beauty: The Early Years of the Remorseless, Lyrical Mrs. Spark" by Scottish author Candia McWilliam. See photo #1. This following the publication of Spark's Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography and of Judy Sproxton's The Women of Muriel Spark.  Includes a nice photo of Spark with her young son, Robin.  

20 September 1996. Shena Mackay here pens a review of Spark's Reality and Dreams. 

5 December 1997. Spark pens most of column in praise of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's News of a Kidnapping as one of the books of the year.  

29 May 1998. Spark here finds herself in "A Bizarre Row" penned in James Campbell's "NB" columns over her "partly Jewish" ancestry and she addresses the topic, while "disagreeably" dragging along with her one of her opponents, critic (and son of the Chief Rabbi in Edinburgh) David Daiches, and her own son, mother and grandmother. Daiches would refute everything Spark asserted a week later in a letter to the TLS editor (not included here) on 5 June. He says, among other things, that he never referred to Spark as his friend and, in fact, that he hardly knew her at all.         

1 September 2000. Patricia Craig offers an essay in review of Spark's Aiding and Abetting. Includes a photo of Spark at her work from 1960. 

26 April 2001. This is a complete issue of the New York Review of Books and it features a longer essay by the youthful (age 33) Scottish novelist and journalist Andrew O'Hagan (with a caricature of Spark by David Levine) in review of Spark's Aiding and Abetting. 

5 October 2001. Joyce Carol Oates here pens a full oversize page in review of Sparks' The Complete Short Stories.  

5 July 2002. Spark here pens a new poem, and a fine one too, called What? See photo #7. 

On Creativity (Methuen, 2003). This is a hardcover volume, 268 pages, with dust wrapper of artist, writer, and filmmaker interviews that includes a 16-page interview with the 85-year-old Spark and the BBC's John Tusa. Spark is still working on her last novel at this date, The Finishing School.  

21 March 2003. Spark here offers two new poems, Facts and The Hospital. See also, photo #7. 

The Threepenny Review (Berkeley) for Winter 2004, #96. Henk Romijn Meijer contributes a full two page oversize spread in review of the New Directions publication of All the Stories of Muriel Spark (2001). He had first interviewed Spark in 1961.   

5 March 2004. Ruth Scurr offers a longer essay headed "Sins against the Holy Spirit" in review of Spark's The Finishing School. The cover of this issues reproduces a portrait of Spark by Alexander Moffat. See photo #2. 

20 August 2004. James Campbell pens a review, headed "Heart of Midlothian, Never Hers" in review of All the Poems of Muriel Spark. Published by New Directions in New York. 

This is another complete issue of the New York Review of Books, for 18 November 2004. John Lancaster here offers two full oversize pages, with a caricature of Spark by David Levine, in review of Spark's The Finishing School (Doubleday). 

3 December 2004. The 86 year-old Spark here details her liking for the works of Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia in a "Books of the Year" column.  I'm also including here, to accompany this issue, another complete TLS for 31 October 1975 that features an essay on the "The Sicilian Pantheon" of literature by Sciascia that may be of some help in explaining Spark's great interest in this writer. 2 Issues. 

24 February 2006. Spark here makes, I believe, her last contribution to the weekly (or any other place) during her lifetime. A poem she calls Report on an Interrogation. She was 88 years old. See photo #10. 

21 April 2006. James Campbell here opens his "Commentary" columns by announcing the passing of the 88 year-old Spark along with details of her long relationship, dating back to the early 1950s, with the weekly.  

2 March 2007. Barton Swaim here pens an extended (three full oversize pages) essay in the "Commentary" pages headed "Strange Books of Psychology: Did Muriel Spark Fall Out with Carl Jung?"  

1 June 2007. James Campbell opens his "Commentary" columns announcing what seems to be the first posthumous publications of Spark, including details of her newly published "Cahier" among other items.  

18 September 2009. The able James Campbell devotes nearly two full oversize pages to the tangled web of Martin Stannard's Muriel Spark: A Biography. Spark is featured on the cover ("Muriel Spark and Her Enemies") of this number in a photo from 1965. See photo #3. 

26 April 2013. Kathryn Hughes here pens a review of an updated edition (Carcanet), augmented with an abridgement of Spark's little known novel, The Last Man, of her biographical treatment of what is simply called here Mary Shelley. It was first published by Spark in 1951 as Child of Light: A reassessment of Mary Shelley, and later revised and reissued by Spark, with a new preface, in 1987. 

10 June 2016. Alan Taylor pens a "Freelance" (1/2 of a full page) article with some detail on Spark's life in Italy (Tuscany). And, see below. 
 
9 June 2017. Alan Taylor (and see below) here pens a full page report on a recent auction of items related to Spark for sale from the estate of her late son, Robin. This is an item of some interest, especially in regard to the prices realized for Spark's early works and the discussion about her poetical achievements.  Includes a school photo of Spark from 1930. 

13 October 2017. Alan Taylor pens a full oversize page headed "The Prime of Miss Kay" detailing Spark's real life model for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Miss Christina Kay. 

1 December 2017. Phillip Lopate pens a review headed "Happy Passenger: A Defense of Muriel Spark" in review of Alan Taylor's Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark. 

2 February 2018. This number features a "Freelance" page dedicated to Bryan Cheyette's essay "The Jewishness of Muriel Spark." 

29 June 2018. This issue features a cover photo of Spark from 1965 (and three more photos inside from various years). It opens with Margaret Drabble's (2.5 oversize pages) essay headed "Snapshots of Muriel" on the cover, in review of the Polygon-published Centenary Edition of the Novels of Muriel Spark, in 22 volumes. 

The New Criterion (NY) for September 2018. David Pryce-Jones contributes a fine essay on the life and work, "Marvelous Muriel Spark." 

The complete front section which includes the "Opinion" page of the Chicago Tribune for 11 October 2024. Chicago librarian and writer James Klise contributes a 1/2 oversize page article headed "Maggie Smith's [1969] Portrayal of Miss Brodie Continues to Teach Us." This is an item of some interest. See photo #14.  

5 September 2025. This is the premier issue of the TLS in its new fortnightly, 48 page format. It opens with Gwendoline Riley's review of Frances Wilson's Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark and of the Dann Gunn edited Letters of Muriel Spark Volume I: 1944-1963. It's followed by an essay by Dann Gunn himself headed "Get Well Soon, and Get Lost." See photos # 17-19. 

AND

The London Review of Books for 9 October 2025. Author Colin Burrow contributes two full oversize pages to the Wilson and Gunn volumes noted above. It's headed "World-Beating Buster-Upper." See photo #20. 

For other Spark items, go to "Spark" in my EBAY STORE above.  

OTHER COLLECTIONS OF LITERATURE IN MY EBAY STORE. HERE YOU CAN FIND: SOME FIRST BOOK EDITIONS, HARD TO FIND LITERARY PERIODICALS OF ALL KINDS, INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, CRITICAL STUDIES, EPHEMERA, ETC.

COLLECTIONS INCLUDE:

James Baldwin, Graham Greene, William H. Gass, William Logan, Thom Gunn, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Martin Heidegger, Allen Ginsberg, Cyril Connolly, William Wordsworth, Modernist Literature and Poetry, Karen Solie, Gay Talese, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Saramago, Early Christianity, Robert Duncan, Naguib Mahfouz, Patricia Highsmith, Elfriede Jelinek, David Ferry, Robert Pinsky, David Jones, Paul Celan, Bruce Chatwin, Walter de la Mare, Henry Adams, Richard G. Stern, Edward Said, Don DeLillo, Clarice Lispector, Hilary Mantel, W.G. Sebald, etc.  

OTHERS IN PREPARATION INCLUDE: Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Reznikoff, Max Beerbohm, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, George Meredith, Georges Simenon, Hamlin Garland, Roberto Bolano, Michael Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, Norman Mailer, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Mew, Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, Charles Simic, W.H. Hudson, Fernando Pessoa, Henry James, W.S. Merwin, Stanley Kunitz,  Francine Prose, Hart Crane, etc.