The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short book by novelist Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark

Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...

, the best known of her works. It first saw publication in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

 in 1961. The character of Miss Jean Brodie

Jean Brodie

Jean Brodie is a fictional character in the Muriel Spark novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; and in the play and film of the same name — both by Jay Presson Allen — which were based on the novel, but radically depart from it in the interest of theatre and poetic licence.Miss...

 brought Spark international fame and brought her into the first rank of contemporary Scottish literature. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.