Muriel Spark's classic "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" features a schoolmistress you'll never forget, in this beautifully repackaged "Penguin Essentials" edition. 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life...' Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the creme de la creme, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty..."The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature. "Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards". (John Updike). "Spark's most celebrated novel". ("Independent"). "There is no question about the quality and distinctiveness of her writing, with its quirky concern with human nature, and its comedy". (William Boyd). "A brilliant psychological figure". ("Observer"). Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the "Observer", and her many subsequent novels include "Memento Mori" (1959), "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" (1960), "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1961), "The Girls of Slender Means" (1963) and "Aiding and Abetting" (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.
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Spark's most celebrated novel Independent There is no question about the quality and distinctiveness of her writing, with its quirky concern with human nature, and its comedy -- William Boyd A brilliant psychological figure Observer
About the Author
Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She was active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story writing competition in the Observer, and her many subsequent novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and Aiding and Abetting (2000). She also wrote plays, poems, children's books and biographies. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993, and died in 2006.
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First Sentence
The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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By Cinnamintz
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and would definitely recommend it. At first, I thought it would be a charming coming-of-age story about a group of privileged girls and their adoring teacher. It is, in fact, much more complex and enigmatic than that. It takes place in 1930s Edinburgh, between the two world wars. The rise of Fascism in Europe serves as a historical backdrop as well as a parallel to Miss Brodie's attempts to control the lives of others.
Spark shows us how the older generation has been marked by WWI (Miss Brodie lost her fiancé, Mr. Lloyd lost his arm, and many of the teachers seem to be hardened by life and suffering). In contrast to some of the other teachers and the headmistress, Miss Brodie is a passionate woman; she is a great believer in art, music, and is full of romantic notions that she seeks to impress upon her chosen students. However, Miss Brodie has a dark, manipulative, self-centered side as well. She seeks to influence her clique of students to do her bidding and this leads to her ultimate undoing.
Spark shows us how the older generation has been marked by WWI (Miss Brodie lost her fiancé, Mr. Lloyd lost his arm, and many of the teachers seem to be hardened by life and suffering). In contrast to some of the other teachers and the headmistress, Miss Brodie is a passionate woman; she is a great believer in art, music, and is full of romantic notions that she seeks to impress upon her chosen students. However, Miss Brodie has a dark, manipulative, self-centered side as well. She seeks to influence her clique of students to do her bidding and this leads to her ultimate undoing.
By Harrison Koehli
TOP 100 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
I couldn't help by shake my head and marvel after finishing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Not only are the characters superb, the story is great and the writing uniquely insightful. Also, the novel is so cleverly and masterfully written. From the first pages you are taken in by its fugue-like structure. I've never read a book like it, where past and present fuse into one, as if the narrator is dipping in and out of time to present a perfectly cogent story not hindered by the rules of causality. Future events are casually revealed, descriptions are repeated as if musical motifs, and yet the plot moves inexorably to its inevitable conclusion. In the end you are left enriched by the lives of Miss Jean Brodie and her set, by their idiosyncrasies, failures, highs and lows. And it's short enough to read in a sitting or two, to boot!
Format:Hardcover
Based on the real life Christina Kay at the James Gillespie school, this classic is a must for anyone who would like to be considered literate in English Literature. Miss Jean Brodie is one of the most complex, idealistic, self-deluded, vulnerable, vital, romantic, preposterous, lonely, gregarious, outspoken and solipsistic character you will ever meet. She is the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle whereas others are only the squares on the two sides. Listen to her lessons: "Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love, and personal loyalitiies. Ideas like 'team spirit' ought not to be enjoined on the female sex, expecially if they are of that dedicated nature whose virtues from time immemorial have been utterly opposed to the concept. Florence Nightingale knew nothing of team spirit, her mission was to save life regardless of the team to which it belonged. Cleopatra knew nothing of the team spirit if you read your Shakespeare. Take Helen of Troy! ... Where would team spirit have got Sybil Thorndike? She is the great actress and the rest of the cast have got the team spirit. Pavlova..."
Jean if you are out there now, marry me. Please. You're my kind of woman.
Jean if you are out there now, marry me. Please. You're my kind of woman.
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3.9 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
A coy bit of Spark-le
The problem with this book is that it's so gnomic. That is, its compact style and size are, I suppose, purposefully wrought in this way so that we may come away asking ourselves... Read more
Published on Oct 12 2002 by Daniel Myers
4.0 out of 5 stars
Underrated Little Classic
I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie because it was on the Modern Library List of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, and I knew it was pretty short. Read more
Published on May 29 2002 by John
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The story is of a spinsterish teacher at an all girls school in Scotland. The action takes place through a series of flashbacks before and after World War II. Read more
Published on April 14 2002 by "cmerrell"
5.0 out of 5 stars
An ingenious little book
"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is the first book I read by this famous Scottish writer, and right after I finished, I searched the web to learn that Dame Spark has... Read more
Published on April 8 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great coming of age story for girls
It's with a sense of real wistfullness that I remember this book. I am going to order another copy to relive the sense of interest and joy that I recall the first book inducing in... Read more
Published on Feb 18 2002
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Decent Read
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is the story of an eccentric, unorthodox teacher at a private school in Scotland. Read more
Published on Nov 28 2001 by Winston Smith
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Weak Novel of Manners
I'm astounded by all the applause this book's been getting. This book is well-written, but it lacks tension, humour, and anything resembling a plot. Read more
Published on Sep 18 2001 by Sai Li
3.0 out of 5 stars
unique, but with many weaknesses
The good points: an interesting story, which is at basic about a woman with a powerful and magnetic personality who used young girls to meet her own unmet personal needs - a... Read more
Published on Sep 1 2001 by Daniel Mackler
3.0 out of 5 stars
ENTERTAINING BUT SLIGHT
Think of yourself as a 10 year old in the environment of a stagnated, uniformed, processed school for girls in the 1930's. Read more
Published on Aug 12 2001 by Sesho
3.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing but oddly unsatisfying
This famous novel concerns an eccentric, charismatic teacher and her influence over a group of Scottish schoolgirls during the 1930s.
The subject is indeed a rich one. Read more
Published on Aug 5 2001 by Kay Gee
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