Muriel Spark: the Biography

Posted by Riklaa on September 6, 2009 at 3:48pm

Muriel Spark: the Biography By Martin Stannard. A biography of one of the 20th century's greatest authors, written with full access to her letters and papers. Read by Hannah Gordon. Producer: Kirsteen Cameron Broadcast Monday 3 to Friday 7 August 2009 (Book Of The Week) 128/44; 64 MB total; sound quality excellent Born in 1918 into a working-class Edinburgh family, Muriel Spark went on to become the epitome of literary chic. In 1992, Spark invited Martin Stannard to write her biography, offering interviews and full access to her papers. The result is a compelling portrait of an extraordinary life. She presented the first 39 years of her life in her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, politely blurring the intensity of her darker moments: her relations with her brother, mother, son and husband; a terrifying period of hallucinations and subsequent depression; and disastrously misplaced love. After a difficult marriage - entered into at the age of 19 - and subsequent period of struggle as a poet and critic, it wasn't until she converted to Roman Catholicism in early middle age that Spark began to write novels. Yet she firmly believed from a very early age that she was a writer. Her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1954. Seven years and four novels later, she'd gained wide-spread literary acclaim with The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. That book's adaptation into a successful stage play and film, marked Spark's full transition into international celebrity and, from that point, she went to live in New York, then Rome and finally Tuscany where for more than 30 years, until her death in 2006, she shared a house with her companion, the artist Penelope Jardine. Part 1 - Muriel Sarah Camberg is born in Edinburgh to a Jewish father and an (English) Anglican mother. Her attendance at James Gillespie's High School for Girls plants the seed for what will eventually become her breakthrough novel. Part 2 - Marriage to an older man offers escape from the claustrophobia of Edinburgh's social microcosm, but the excesses of life in colonial Africa soon prove overwhelming. Part 3 - Spark's unique literary voice is discovered when she wins The Observer's Christmas story competition in 1951 with The Seraph and the Zambesi, beating 7,000 other entries. Part 4 - Spark's life is transformed by the publication of her fifth novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which gained critical and commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic when it was published in 1961. Part 5 - Despite finding companionable happiness in Italy, the vexations of Spark's family life continued to intrude long into her old age. 1-3 of 5

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