Muriel Sarah Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Val Scullion (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1961

Places

Scotland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Muriel Spark's sixth novel,

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

, was first published in 1961 by

The New Yorker

magazine and later in that year by Macmillan in Britain. It is probably the most well known of all her novels and has attracted critical responses from prestigious academics including Frank Kermode and David Lodge. Kermode praised Spark as a “remarkable virtuoso being in her prime” (“The House of Fiction”, 1963), while Lodge described his essay on

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

as a “personal act of amends” for an earlier negative review (“The Uses and Abuses of Omniscience”, 1971). In general, there is lack of critical consensus about Spark's work. It is certainly easy to read this novel in a cursory way. Its black comedy and the economy and lucidity of style are…

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3822 words

Citation: Scullion, Val. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7450, accessed 28 April 2024.]

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