The Ballad of Peckham Rye
By (Author) Muriel Spark
Introduction by William Boyd
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
6th June 2006
27th April 2006
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.914
Paperback
160
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 9mm
125g
New to Modern Classics alongside Spark's The Drivers' Seat (ISBN- 0141188340) A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself.
"The best English novelist writing today".
-- (London) Times Literary Supplement
Muriel Spark (born February 1, 1918) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She began writing seriously after the war, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947, she became editor of the Poetry Review. Her first novel The Comforters was published in 1957, but it was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1962) which established her reputation. After living in New York for some years, she settled in Italy in the late 1960s. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993.