SPARK, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. 1961.
8vo. Original green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Victor Reinganum, correctly priced 13s 6d to the front flap; pp. [4], 171, [1]; a touch of fading to cloth at spine tips, a little wear to jacket tips and corners; otherwise a bright, sharp, very near fine copy in like wrapper.
An uncommonly fine, bright, first printing of the novel that made its author famous.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark’s sixth novel, established her reputation as one of the sharpest, funniest, and most original British novelists of the twentieth century. First published in its entirety in The New Yorker, the first UK edition, issued later the same year, marked the work’s first appearance in book form.
Set in Edinburgh in the 1930s, the novel moves freely backwards and forwards in time and centres on the education of six girls at the Marcia Blaine School, and the manipulative influence of their teacher, Miss Jean Brodie (“the most charismatic anti-hero in Scottish literature”). The covert classroom drama culminates in betrayal and dismissal.
The novel’s success was consolidated by the 1969 film adaptation starring Maggie Smith, whose performance won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
SKU: 2124442