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The Golden Fleece: Essays
‘Good literary essays have sustaining and stimulating qualities, like deep wells and clear rivers.’
The essays, reviews, memoirs and other writings collected here for the first time conjure up one of the great critical imaginations of our time. Muriel Spark’s companion, in her preface, remembers how, ‘In the long-ago summer of 1991 Muriel rented a house for the month of July on the German island of Sylt in the North Sea, off Denmark […] Here, in Kampen, I spread out a lifetime of Muriel’s essays and reviews.’ Here The Golden Fleece (which takes its title from Spark’s first published essay) began. Its four sections (Art & Poetry; Autobiography & Travel; Literature; and Religion, Politics & Philosophy) ‘tell many things, mainly about the author’, forming a kind of oblique autobiography, an evolving confession of a powerful individual faith in the human and what transcends it.
The essays, reviews, memoirs and other writings collected here for the first time conjure up one of the great critical imaginations of our time. Muriel Spark’s companion, in her preface, remembers how, ‘In the long-ago summer of 1991 Muriel rented a house for the month of July on the German island of Sylt in the North Sea, off Denmark […] Here, in Kampen, I spread out a lifetime of Muriel’s essays and reviews.’ Here The Golden Fleece (which takes its title from Spark’s first published essay) began. Its four sections (Art & Poetry; Autobiography & Travel; Literature; and Religion, Politics & Philosophy) ‘tell many things, mainly about the author’, forming a kind of oblique autobiography, an evolving confession of a powerful individual faith in the human and what transcends it.
- GenresEssaysNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
3 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Spark
229 books1,305 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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