Overview
The essays, reviews, memoirs, and other writings collected here for the first time conjure up one of the great critical imaginations of our time. The Golden Fleece, which takes its title from Spark’s first published essay, has four sections—Art & Poetry; Autobiography & Travel; Literature; and Religion, Politics & Philosophy—forming a kind of oblique autobiography, an evolving confession of a powerful individual faith in the human and what transcends it.Reviews
"Spark’s writing has a subtle merriment about it, a lightness of touch, a willingness to share in fleeting moments of mundane love and pleasure." —Jenny Turner, London Review of BooksAuthor Biography
Muriel Spark edited Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949 and published her first volume of poems, The Fanfarlo, in 1952. She is the author of several books, including The Abbess of Crewe,  Memento Mori, The Finishing School, The Girls of Slender Means, A Far Cry from Kensington, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She was made Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 1996 and awarded her DBE in 1993. The National Library of Scotland holds the Muriel Spark archive. Penelope Jardine is a painter who was Muriel Spark’s assistant, friend, and living companion for the last three decades of Muriel’s life.