SPARK, Muriel (1918-2006). The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, London, 1961, 8vo, original green cloth, dust-jacket. FIRST EDITION.

SPARK, Muriel (1918-2006). The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, London, 1961, 8vo, original green cloth, dust-jacket. FIRST EDITION.

Starting bid£100
Estimate £200 - £300
Absentee deadlineDec 3, 2025, 5:00:00 PM

SPARK, Muriel (1918-2006).  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. London: Macmillan & Co Ltd., 1961. 8vo (198 x 130mm). Half title. Original bright green cloth, the spine lettered in gilt, dust-jacket by Victor Reinganum with the price of 13s.6d. unclipped (some light rubbing and creasing to the foot of the backstrip and light staining to the lower wrapper). Please note that the original dust-jacket has been photographed in its modern protective archival Mylar wrapper, thereby avoiding any risk of damage through its temporary removal. FIRST EDITION. "Perhaps her best-known work ... a disturbing portrait of an Edinburgh schoolmistress and her group of favoured girls, her 'crème de la crème'" (The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Drabble, 1985). Boxall (ed.) 1001 Books (2006) p.538: "From Miss Brodie's chilling Jesuitical assertion - 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life' - through to the novel's dark conclusions, Spark poses a series of difficult questions about education, femininity, and authoritarianism ... Tapping into the strange sadomasochistic fantasies of pedagogical crushes and schoolroom sexual tensions, the novel works through the curiously ineffective consequences of this 'education' on the Brodie set, seen darkly through pupil Sandy Stranger's eyes. Satirical comedy as political diagnosis, it brings the morality of teaching and storytelling into stark relief: a delight." The novel was made into a critically-acclaimed film directed by Ronald Neame in 1969, with Maggie Smith in the title role for which she won the Academy Award for 'Best Actress'.