SOURCE: Miner, Valerie. “The Light of the Muse.” Women's Review of Books 3, no. 3 (December 1985): 7-8.

In the following review, Miner praises The Magnificent Spinster as “provocative in itself and as a mirror of past work, reflecting such classic Sarton issues as social conscience, aging, women's autonomy, friendship and the nature of art.”

When I was young, I misunderstood The Muse. Now I am older and wiser, I can be glad of her As one is glad of the light. We do not thank the light, But rejoice in what we see Because of it. What I see today Is the snow falling: All things are made new. 

“Of The Muse,” May Sarton

The Magnificent Spinster, May Sarton's forty-second book, is a model and metaphor of her literary life. A rather magnificent spinster herself, Sarton has had an iconoclastic and prolific writing career, publishing seventeen previous novels, fourteen books...