The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Description

Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she'll be mine for life. I am dedicated to you in my prime.' While Miss Brodie manipulates and charms 'her girls' - known as the Brodie Set - with notions of romance and heroism, tragedy and a cruel betrayal beckon. This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. ALL are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006. Alan Taylor has contributed to numerous publications, including the TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited four acclaimed anthologies - The Assassin's Cloak (2000), The Secret Annexe (2004), The Country Diaries(2009) and most recently, Glasgow: The Autobiography (2016).

'As I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark. Wisdom and wit - ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world' -- Julian Clary * Daily Mail * 'A perfect gem of a story, morally complex, harrowing, funny, and featuring the most charismatic anti-hero in Scottish literature' -- Ian Rankin * The Guardian *