Miss Jean Brodie is a rare breed of teacher - passionate, independent-minded and romantically inspired, with not the slightest care for convention. She soon garners a devoted following of six young girls, who will become known as 'the Brodie set', and begins to shape them in her own image. But Miss Brodie is more than just an individual with an intense desire to control and mould her girls. Beneath the facade of this self-possessed woman lie some sinister truths, and a keen interest in fascism ...A tour de force of contemporary Scottish literature, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark is a compelling portrait of a woman's dark quest for immortality. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition features an afterword by publisher Anna South. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much-loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she ll be mine for life. I am dedicated to you in my prime.' While Miss Brodie manipulates and charms 'her girls' - known as the Brodie Set - with notions of romance and heroism, tragedy and a cruel betrayal beckon.

This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and--most important--in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her creme de la creme. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set--Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy--is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me."

And they do. But one of them will betray her.

Before she published her distinguished novels, Muriel Spark first made her name as a critic and poet. Her discerning study of the poet and novelist John Masfield will therefore be doubly welcome, as an example of her earlier work, and as one of the best introductions to Masefield. With characteristic insight, Spark shows Masfield's development as a storyteller, through his early lyrics to his long narrative poems and finally his prose, together with his gift for observation of the life around him. John Masefield (1878-1967) lived a life as varied as his work. At the age of fifteen he went to sea as an apprentice in a windjammer and made the voyage round Cape Horn. The next three years he spent in New York, in a bakery, a livery stable, a saloon and a carpet factory. Back in England, he wrote for the Guardian and in the First World War served with the Red Cross. Throughout these years he had been writing poetry, and when in 1923 his Collected Poems appeared they sold over 200,000 copies. In 1930 he succeeded Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate.He was a prodigious novelist, essayist and poet; among his best known works are The Everlasting Mercy, Dauber, Reynard the Fox, Sard Marker and The Midnight Folk. 'I feel a large amount of my writing on him can be applied generally', wrote Spark in 1992: 'It is in many ways a statement of my position as a literary critic and I hope some readers will recognise it as such.'

Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday - in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.

Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions, begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club itself -- three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit -- its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful War wounds. Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in The london Sunday Times Review, The Girls of Slender Means is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has called one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment.

Rich and slim, the celebrated author Nancy Hawkins takes us in hand and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London, where she spends her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ( of very good books ) and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming house. Everywhere Mrs. Hawkins finds evil: with aplomb, however, she confidently sets about putting things to order, to terrible effect."

Muriel Spark claimed The Driver’s Seat to be her best and creepiest novel. Once you have met her heroine Lise – heading for the holiday of a lifetime in an extraordinarily garish dress and with violence on her mind – you will understand why.

It is no surprise that one of Muriel Spark's most lively and entertaining works would be her own memoir, Curriculum Vitae. Born to a Scottish Jewish father and an English Presbyterian mother, Spark describes her childhood in 1930s Edinburgh in brief, dazzling anecdotes. In one she recalls a cherished schoolteacher, Christina Kay, who would later be used as the prototype for Miss Jean Brodie. Spark boldly details her disastrous first marriage to Sydney Oswald Spark (S.O.S.) - himself thirty-two, she just nineteen - whom she followed to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and left behind to return to England. In the midst of WWII, Spark took a bizarre position working in the disinformation campaign of the British Secret Service, eliciting information from German POWs to combat Nazi propaganda. She later moved to the Poetry Society of London, where she mingled with literati and other intellectuals, befriended by some (such as Graham Greene, an early supporter of her work) and sparring with others. We experience Spark's joy with the publication of her first novel, The Comforters, her trials with other writers' envy, and her emergence as the most brilliant femme fatale of 20th-century English literature.

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy - the 'creme de la creme' - who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget.

In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, 'Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write "poetic" prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet.' Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for the telling detail, her command of poetic forms and her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse. Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone reminds each: Remember you must die. Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled, and many an old unsavory secret is dusted off.

A funny and clever novel about art and reality and the way they imitate each other, from the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. With an introduction by Mark Lawson. Would-be novelist Fleur Talbot works for the snooty, irascible Sir Quentin Oliver at the Autobiographical Association, whose members are all at work on their memoirs. When her employer gets his hands on Fleur's novel-in-progress, mayhem ensues as its scenes begin coming true... Spark's inimitable style make this literary joyride thoroughly appealing. 'The most gloriously entertaining novel since The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.' AN Wilson, Spectator 'I read this book in a delirium of delight ... robust and full-bodied, a wise and mature work, and a brilliantly mischievous one.' New York Times Book Review

First published by Peter Owen in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems. Perceptively but unsentimentally, Spark considers the Brontes' lives and works, including their generally disastrous attempts at teaching, and reflects on her own fascination, as a writer and a reader, with Emily Bronte and with 'the immortal Wuthering Heights and its nightmare hero'. This edition features a new foreword by Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor at the Independent.

Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.

Beautifully packaged reissue of one of Muriel Spark's best loved novels, The Girls of Slender Means 'Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions' In the May of Teck Club - a London hostel 'three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit' - the young lady residents do their best to act as if the war never happened. They practice elocution, and jostle one another over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. But behind the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations they hide some tragically painful secrets and wounds.'You girls are my vocation . . . I am dedicated to you in my prime' 'Reading the novel as a young woman was a random gift; rereading it today is to encounter the rarest of fiction and to appreciate the early and enduring genius of Muriel Spark' Carol Shields, Guardian 'One of Spark's most evocative novels' Anne Taylor Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.

Caroline Rose has a problem. She hears voices and the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, and she seems to be a character in a novel . . . A comedy of errors, a crime novel, a book about books, Spark's debut remains as otherworldly and mischievous as it was when first published sixty years ago. The publishers acknowledge investment from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book. Supported by the Muriel Spark Society.

From the cruel irony of 'A member of the Family' to the fateful echoes of 'The Go-Away Bird' and the unexpectedly sinister 'The Girl I Left Behind Me', in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent. The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short story writers of the twentieth century.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the wickedly farcical fable of a blue-collar town turned upside down. When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas (a.k.a. Douglas Dougal) to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. "Not only funny but startlingly original", declared The Washington Post, "the legendary character of Dougal Douglas...may not have been boasting when he referred so blithely to his association with the devil". In fact this Music Man of the thoroughly modern corporation changes the lives of all the eccentric characters he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to V.R. Druce, unsuspecting Managing Director. The Ballad of Peckham Rye presents Dame Muriel Spark at her most devilishly piquant.

Described as 'a metaphysical shocker' at the time of its release, Muriel Sparks' The Driver's Seat is a taut psychological thriller, published with an introduction by John Lanchester in Penguin Modern Classics. Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and new experiences takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate. One of six novels to be nominated for a 'Lost Man Booker Prize', The Driver's Seat was adapted into a 1974 film, Identikit, starring Elizabeth Taylor. Muriel Spark (1918 - 2006) wrote poetry, stories, and biographies as well as a remarkable series of novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) which received the James Tait Black Prize, and The Public Image (1968) and Loitering with Intent (1981), both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Spark was awarded the T.S. Eliot Award for poetry in 1992, and the David Cohen Prize for literature in 1997. If you enjoyed The Driver's Seat, you might like Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'An extraordinary tour de force, a crime story turned inside out' David Lodge 'Her spiny and treacherous masterpiece' New Yorker

Spiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He's been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London's bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the 'cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books', The Bachelors is a biting comedy of English manners. This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection Muriel Spark's classic The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie features a schoolmistress you'll never forget, in this beautifully repackaged Penguin Essentials edition. 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life . . .' Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the creme de la creme, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty . . . The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature. 'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards' John Updike 'Spark's most celebrated novel' Independent 'There is no question about the quality and distinctiveness of her writing, with its quirky concern with human nature, and its comedy' William Boyd 'A brilliant psychological figure' Observer Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.

When Barbara Vaughan's fiancé joins an archaeological excursion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, she takes the opportunity to explore the Holy Land. It is 1961, and the nation of Israel is still in its infancy. For Barbara, a half-Jewish Catholic convert, this is a journey of faith, and she ignores warnings not to cross the Mandelbaum Gate from Israel into Jordan. An adventure of espionage and abduction, from pilgrimage to flight, The Mandelbaum Gate is one of Spark's most compelling novels, and won the James Tait Memorial Prize.

'The greatest Scottish novelist of modern times . . . She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme.' Ian Rankin One October evening five London couples gather for a dinner party, enjoying 'the pheasant (flambe in cognac as it is)' and waiting for the imminent arrival of the late-coming guest Hilda Damien, who has been unavoidably detained due to the fact that she is being murdered at this very moment. With an introduction by Ian Rankin. Symposium is Muriel Spark - one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and author of classics including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - at her wicked best. 'A rich, heady, disturbing brew.' Lorna Sage 'Extremely clever and highly entertaining.' Penelope Lively 'Stiletto-sharp fiction.' Alan Taylor, Scotland on Sunday

With a cover design by Lucienne Day When Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a 'pisseur de copie', that he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.