The Girls Of Slender Means

Description

In the May of Teck Club - a London hostel 'three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit' - the young lady residents do their best to act as if the war never happened. Beautifully packaged reissue of one of Muriel Spark's best loved novels, The Girls of Slender Means 'Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions' In the May of Teck Club - a London hostel 'three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit' - the young lady residents do their best to act as if the war never happened. They practice elocution, and jostle one another over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. But behind the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations they hide some tragically painful secrets and wounds.'You girls are my vocation . . . I am dedicated to you in my prime' 'Reading the novel as a young woman was a random gift; rereading it today is to encounter the rarest of fiction and to appreciate the early and enduring genius of Muriel Spark' Carol Shields, Guardian 'One of Spark's most evocative novels' Anne Taylor 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.

Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. Active in the field of creative writing from1950(after winning a short-story competition in the Observer), her many subsequent novels and stories, such as Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, The Only Problem, A Far Cry From Kensington and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (adapted successfully for both film and theatre), remain phenomenally popular throughout the world. She alsowrote plays, poems and children's books as well as biographies of Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte and John Masefield. Her first autobiographical volume, Curriculum Vitae, was published in 1992. She was elected C.Litt. in 1992 and was awarded the DBE in 1993. During her lifetime she received many awards, including; the Italia Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the FNAC Prix Etranger, the Saltire Prize, the Ingersoll T. S. Eliot Award and the David Cohen British Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement. She was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978 and Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1996. Dame Muriel Spark died in 2006.