The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — The Folio Society | Muriel Spark | 1998 | First Printing, Illustrated by Beryl Cook | Fine

Give her a girl at an impressionable age, and she is hers for life.

Muriel Spark's most famous novel is barely 150 pages long and has never once lost its grip. In 1930s Edinburgh, Miss Jean Brodie of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls gathers about her a chosen few, the Brodie set, the crème de la crème, and fills their heads with Renaissance painting, her lost love killed in the war, her admiration for Mussolini and the conviction that she is in her prime. She is magnificent, ridiculous and dangerous in roughly equal measure, and one of her girls will eventually betray her.

Spark drew on her own Edinburgh schooldays and an unforgettable teacher of her own, and the book she made of them is funny, sharp and quietly devastating, told with the sly habit of letting slip, chapters ahead, exactly what will become of everyone. Maggie Smith won an Oscar playing Miss Brodie on screen, but the novel remains the thing itself.

This Folio Society edition of 1998 is illustrated throughout in full colour by Beryl Cook, and it is hard to imagine a better match. Cook's round, knowing, faintly scandalous figures in their purple gymslips catch Spark's comedy perfectly, from the giggling girls to the art master's lingering glances, and the colour plates are as vivid as the day they were printed. The book is bound in blue cloth printed with a repeating white pattern of saltires and flowers, with a navy spine label lettered in gilt, and comes in its navy Folio slipcase.

Condition: Fine. The boards are bright and clean, the spine label crisp with bright gilt and no fading, and the text and colour plates clean and unmarked throughout. The slipcase is present and sound.

About this edition: this is the first Folio printing of 1998; the edition was reprinted several times after. Beryl Cook has a devoted following of her own, and this is among the most sought-after of her book illustration work, as well as one of the most enjoyable Folio editions of a modern classic.

Extra photographs available on request. Just get in touch and we will be happy to help.

Wrapped in good heavy paper — we don't skimp on that — and packed into a sturdy box so nothing shifts on the way to you, wherever in the world that happens to be. Kat packs and checks every parcel herself, and she is not easily pleased. The unwrapping ought to be half the pleasure.

The Novel Relics Team