Catholic author Muriel Spark dies at 88 in Italy

Published: 2006-04-18

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic novelist Muriel Spark, author of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and more than 20 other books, died April 13 in a hospital in Florence, Italy. She was 88. Her funeral took place April 15 in the Tuscan town of Civitella della Chiana, where Spark had lived for almost three decades. Spark, who became a Catholic in 1954, received the 2001 Campion Award, given annually to a noted Christian person of letters by the Catholic Book Club, a subsidiary of America Press. A working journalist, editor and biographer, Spark did not publish any novels until she was 39, three years after she became Catholic. Her first novel, "The Comforters" (1957), was inspired by her studies on the Book of Job, according to a BBC Web site. "Several critics agree that her religious conversion was the central event of her life," the BBC said of Spark. In 1961 she published her most famous work, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," the story of a charismatic teacher and her influence on a group of favorite girls.

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