A pleasing presentation copy of Muriel Spark’s early editorial outing for The Grey Walls Press, which marked the beginning of a Brontë streak for the Scottish author; inscribed in the actual year of publication (1953, rather than 1952) to the British designer, writer and former editor of the New English Weekly, Philip Mairet, “with kind wishes”.
Following on the heels of this commission from Wrey Gardiner for his Crown Classics series, Spark co-edited Emily Bronte: Her life and work (1953) and The Bronte Letters (1954). One biographer has argued that Spark’s ‘Introduction’ to this selection “hinted at personal associations” in her readings of “the various critical images of Emily – ‘as mystic, as poet of Christianity, as heretic, as heathen, as intellectual thinker, as psychical hermaphrodite’ – Muriel seems obliquely to be noting the misdefinitions from which she had herself suffered” and concluded: “Consciously or unconsciously, Muriel seems to have been talking as much about herself as about her subject” (Stannard, 2009).
As with many of her publications of the era (the majority with small presses), Spark “had to wait for a long, long time for my money” (Spark, 1992). Despite the 1952 publication date, Selected Poems didn’t appear until 1953.
Spark’s dedicatee Philip Mairet (1886–1975; also the dedicatee of T S Eliot’s Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948)) lived a long, active and diversely interested life, with connections to the Arts and Crafts movement, the Adler Society, Guild Socialism and Social Credit, as well as organic farming and early environmentalism. He was also a translator (of Jean-Paul Sartre), biographer (of Alfred Orage and John Middleton Murry) and editor. Spark likely knew him through his editorship (1934-49) of the New English Weekly, which had published her poetry.
Muriel Spark (1992) Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography. London: Constable; Martin Stannard (2009) Muriel Spark: The Biography. London: Phoenix.
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