Plynck
April 15, 2006, 8:59pm
1
Dame Muriel Spark, best known as the author of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, is dead at the age of 88.
ROME (Reuters) - Ascerbic Scottish-born novelist Muriel Spark, best known for her book “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, has died in Italy at the age of 88 and was buried in Tuscany on Saturday.
Spark wrote 24 novels, several short stories and three well-received biographies during her long career.
But she shot to fame with her 1962 fictional work “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, a tense novel about a young teacher stirring thoughts of emancipation at an Edinburgh girls’ school in staid society between the two world wars.
](http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2006-04-15T173055Z_01_L15716222_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SPARK.xml )Actually more than “several” short stories. I started reading her work over the last six or seven years, and came to appreciate her style. I liked her novels, but it was her short stories that I really liked. In fact, I thought that she had a lot in common with Jean Rhys; interesting novels, but short stories that were little gems.
I’ll be interested to see if there are unpublished works that will be released now.
Wow. Sparks was one of the few living authors that I studied during my undergrad. Her work was a bit on the crazy side, to say the least. I’m sorry to hear she has passed away - she was an amazing author, and I hope she’s at peace.