British writer (b. Feb. 1, 1918,
Edinburgh, Scot.
—d. April 13, 2006,
Florence, Italy
), was admired for the satire and wit with which she presented the serious themes of her novels and for her ability to create disturbing, compelling characters and a disquieting sense of moral ambiguity. Her best-known novel,
Edinburgh
and spent several years (1937–44) with her husband in southern Africa, which served as the setting for her first volume of short stories,
U.K.
, where she wrote wartime propaganda for the British foreign office. She then served (1947–49) as general secretary of the Poetry Society and editor of
Spark
published a series of critical biographies of literary figures and editions of 19th-century letters, including
Spark
's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1954 pervaded much of her later writings. With the publication of her first novel,
Spark
's later novels were
Spark
was made DBE in 1993.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1961), centred on an eccentric, domineering teacher at a girls' school; it gained great success in its stage (1966) and film (1969) versions. She was educated in
The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories
(1958).
In 1944 she left her husband to return to the
The Poetry Review
.
Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(1951; rev. ed.,
Mary Shelley
, 1987),
John Masefield
(1953), and
The Brontë Letters
(1954).
The Comforters
(1957), her talent as a novelist was immediately evident. Her third novel,
Memento Mori
(1959), was adapted for the stage in 1964 and for television in 1992.
The Mandelbaum Gate
(1965) marked a departure from the humorous and slightly unsettling fantasy that characterized her earlier novels—notably
Memento Mori
,
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
(1960), and
The Girls of Slender Means
(1963; filmed for television 1975)—toward weightier themes.
The Driver's Seat
(1970; filmed 1974),
Not to Disturb
(1971), and
The Abbess of Crewe
(1974; filmed as
Nasty Habits
, 1977) had a distinctly sinister tone. Among
Territorial Rights
(1979),
A Far Cry from Kensington
(1988),
Reality and Dreams
(1996), and
The Finishing School
(2004). Other works included
Collected Poems I
(1967),
Collected Stories I
(1967), and an autobiography,
Curriculum Vitae
(1992).
