The Girls of Slender Means
Written by Muriel Spark / Introduction by Rosemary Goring
£9.99
58 in stock
Fiction
Reviews
Hers is a rare get-on-with-it wit. Especially in a depressed society — one recovering from some collective crisis, like a war (or perhaps a pandemic) — those of “slender means,” to some extent everyone, must make a personal, moral choice about the kind of person they are to be'
National Review (USA)
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'
Daily Mail
About the Book
London, 1945. The girls of slender means are the residents of the May of Teck Club, a genteel yet rather shabby boarding house established for the ‘social protection of ladies of slender means below the age of thirty years’. The novel concerns their everyday affairs over a period of a few weeks before a shocking event transforms their lives.
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.
The Authors
Muriel Spark
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.Rosemary Goring
Rosemary Goring was born in Dunbar and studied at the University of St Andrews. She worked at W&R Chambers as a reference editor before becoming literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. She was also the literary editor for The Herald and Sunday Herald, and is the author of two historical novels, After Flodden and Dacre's War.Alan Taylor
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).Related
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Paperback | Pub: 05 Jul 2018£4.99In November 2017 Ali Smith gave the annual Muriel Spark Lecture to kick off the Muriel Spark centenary celebrations. Those lucky enough to get tickets were treated to an invigorating, joyous call-and-response between two of our best writers, both...
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Hardback | Pub: 16 Nov 2017£9.99Caroline Rose has a problem. She hears voices and the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, and she seems to be a character in a novel . . . A comedy of errors, a crime novel, a book about books, Spark’s debut remains as otherworldly and...
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Apr 2020£5.00In this volume Michael Rosen introduces Edwin Morgan’s animal poems. Morgan’s empathy with animals is well represented, from the still very topical ‘The White Rhinoceros’ to the prehistoric ‘The Bearsden Shark’ and the famous ‘The Loch...
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Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99Bestowed at birth with two gifts, an ivory flute and a bag of silver and gold coins, a young girl wanders through time. She is destined to pursue the dragon of war and before he consumes the world in flames, subdue him not with violence but music....
