Muriel Sarah Spark (born 1918) wrote biography, literary criticism, poetry, and fiction, including the novel that was considered her masterpiece, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Born in Edinburgh on February 1, 1918, Muriel Spark worked in the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office in 1944-1945, was the general secretary of the Poetry Society from 1947 to 1949, and served as the editor of Poetry Review in 1949. She was the founder of the literary magazine Forum and worked as a part-time editor for Peter Owen Ltd.

In the early 1950s Spark published her first poetry collection, The Fanfarlo and Other Verse (1952), and built a solid reputation as a biographer with Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1951); Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work (1953); and John Masefield (1953). She also edited A Collection of Poems by Emily Brontë (1952), My Best Mary: The Letters of Mary Shelley (1954), and, most important...