Spark, Dame Muriel

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Spark, Dame Muriel (1918– ) English novelist, short-story writer, and poet. Spark's collected poems and short stories were published in 1967, but she is best known for her novels, which include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), and Symposium (1990). The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) is a portrait of a charismatic schoolmistress.