The Reception of Muriel Spark in Spain

This article investigates the reception of the novels by Muriel Spark (and films based on them) in Spain, by considering the chronological sequence of translations into Spanish (Latin American editions will also be mentioned) and Catalan. It describes non-scholarly documents such as editorial notes, press reviews and announcements, and censorship reports. Although in the 1960s Muriel Spark was acclaimed in Britain as a talented and innovative writer, few of her novels were available in Spain by the end of the decade. Even The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was censored by Franco's regime, which had moral, political, and stylistic objections, and was belatedly published in May 2006, one month after Spark's death. The erratic publication of her novels hampered a reasonable assessment of Spark's novelistic framework and style, not to mention her moral and psychological subtleties, which went largely unnoticed by both censors and reviewers. Although her literary personality was always ranked by journalists among the best, her art was more valued for her outstanding fame abroad than for the merits of her books available in Spain.