Essence of Brontë, Prime of Spark – 18 July 2025

Earlier this week I demonstrated my originality by taking Wuthering Heights with me on a trip to Yorkshire. It seemed the appropriate setting. Admittedly I was not exactly traipsing across moors, beset by storms or gales or ghosts or even Gothic antiheroes but pottering about Malham Cove in the sunshine between cream teas and cocktails. I bore these hardships as best I could. It’s what Emily would have wanted, I thought, each time I reached for another scone.

Alongside Wuthering Heights, I had of course packed so many books that I hardly knew where to turn. Fortunately a cup of Yorkshire tea aids all difficult decisions and I picked up Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell, a novel imagining the life of Emily Brontë from when she was first sent away to school aged six to her death at thirty.

It rendered me suitably buffeted by wild winds and longing. The scenes of Anne, Charlotte and Emily sharing their writing are stunning – quiet and intricate, full of creativity, love for one another and competitiveness. Branwell is drawn brilliantly, a villain of course but a sympathetic one, and as for Emily’s dog, Keeper… well let’s just say that I am now thinking of adopting a Bullmastiff. Or being adopted by one.

A portrait of the heroic dog features in Muriel Spark’s The Essence of the Brontës too, a collection of essays on the sisters, Emily in particular, as well as Spark’s selection of their letters and Emily’s poetry which she admires greatly. Being Muriel Spark, even the section she calls ‘The Basic Story’ of Emily Brontë is ironic and full of amusing critique. She was obsessed with the Brontës, haunted (and I think Spark really means it when she writes ‘haunted’) by Emily, but never overcome by adulation.

While Spark claims that a biography of Emily must not try to strip away legend, perhaps she had an eye on her own true mythology too. In Electric Spark, Frances Wilson shows the delights of trying to piece together the puzzle of Muriel Spark, an impossible and fascinating task since her life – ‘lives’ may be more appropriate – repeatedly reflects the more outrageous of her own plots.

Wilson’s biography focuses on Spark’s life leading up to the publication of her first novel, The Comforters, when she was 39, though drawing in discussion of many later works. The sections pivot about four Marys (Shelley being one of them; I shall let you discover the Protean others) who influenced/shaped/inspired/hindered Muriel, or who became alter egos of sorts. Complex to summarise but in Wilson’s hands, the enigma is handled brilliantly. It is really an extraordinary biography written in innovative style, a joy to read.    

It is a comfort to return home, unpack the books and make one’s next reading choice from the holiday pile, as if this somehow perpetuates the trip. In the mood for Spark, I have been reading The Comforters for the first time. Loitering With Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie are two of my favourite books but The Comforters is pushing for its place on that list.

Laurence Manders (of Manders’ Figs in Syrup, of course) has gone to visit his grandmother. His parents are worried about her financial situation. But she appears able to afford luxurious Bulgarian cigarettes and there are diamonds hidden in the bread… Meanwhile his (possibly-)ex-partner Caroline is hearing voices which narrate her thoughts with terrifying accuracy. An author is trying to take over her life. And then there is Baron Willi Stock, a gossipy bookseller and Satanist. And Georgina Hogg the zealous Catholic with whom one would never want to get stuck in a lift. It’s a riot. It’s marvellous.

I’m off to finish it and then, thanks to the recommendation of the Slightly Foxed podcast, to turn to the black humour of Spark’s Memento Mori. There is a strong possibility that the newsletter for the next few weeks (months?) will be largely inflamed by Spark.

May your weekend be electrifying,
Lizzie