The original exercise books in which Muriel Spark wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and her novel The Driving Seat, are on show to the public in a major new exhibition in Edinburgh.
The International Style of Muriel Spark opens at the National Library of Scotland on December 8.
The handwritten pages in four plain exercise jotters bought from James Thin’s bookshop in Edinburgh are on display, as well as a wealth of intimate notes, books, telegrams and other material from the writer's life.
The manuscript is now owned by the University of Tulsa but it has been loaned to the National Library for the exhibition along with the manuscript of Spark’s own favourite novel, The Driver’s Seat.
The show includes correspondence with some of the biggest names in 20th century literature including Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, John Updike and Gore Vidal.
It is not arranged in order of the writer's life, and has been deliberately arranged to change place and time, much like the modernist style of her novels.
There is a handwritten note from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis offering to buy the worldwide rights to Spark’s auto-biography.
It includes handbags and evening dresses worn by Spark along with invitations to events sent by presidents, royalty and leading socialites.
The exhibition looks at her life through the places she lived – Edinburgh, Rhodesia, London, New York, Rome and Tuscany.
One of Scotland’s most successful modern day novelists, Ian Rankin, whose own writing got in the way of him completing a PhD on Spark’s work, is to formally open the exhibition.
He said: “An exhibition on Muriel Spark’s life and work is long overdue and it is time she was rightly recognised as one of our greatest ever writers, constantly inspired by Scotland and her upbringing in Edinburgh.”
The exhibition has been put together by Dr Colin McIlroy, the Library’s Muriel Spark Project Curator, who has spent the past two years immersed in the detail of the archive.
The International Style of Muriel Spark runs from 8 December 8- 13 May at the National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. Entry is free.
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