Muriel Spark (née Camberg) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1918. Her father, who was descended from Lithuanian immigrants, was Jewish, and her mother was English and Anglican. From 1923 to 1935, she attended James Gillespie’s School for Girls, during which time she was taught by Miss Christina Kay, who would become the inspiration for Jean Brodie. She briefly attended Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh, studying writing and commercial correspondence, before working as an English teacher and a saleswoman in a department store. In 1937, she married Sidney Oswald Spark—who was 13 years her senior—and traveled with him to Zimbabwe, where he was working as a teacher. Their son Robin was born in 1938. Spark divorced her husband in 1940 after learning that his bipolar disorder led to violent outbursts. She placed Robin in a convent school, where he remained through the end of World War II, and their relationship eventually became strained and distant.

Spark began writing poetry and literary criticism after the war, becoming the editor of the Poetry Review in 1947 and founding her own literary magazine, Forum, in 1949. She was known for her editorial adventurousness and willingness to publish works by new poets.