More on Makars' Court - Edinburgh Museums

Smith was also a poet of Edinburgh, in the tradition of Robert
Fergusson, and his long poem Kynd Kittock’s Land (1965) is a
loving description of his adopted city in all its different moods.
Before his death on 15 January 1975 he had come to be regarded
as the most important writer in the second generation of the
Scottish Renaissance.
Sponsored by the family of Sydney Goodsir Smith, 2003.
Muriel Spark (1918 - 2006)
Best known for her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, based
largely on her schooldays at James Gillespie’s School, Edinburgh,
Muriel Spark was one of the most original and influential writers of
the late twentieth century. She left Edinburgh for Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe) on her marriage at the age of 18. After her divorce, she
spent her whole working life (in London, New York and Italy) in the
literary world; firstly in publishing and, following her conversion to
Catholicism at the age of 46, as a writer of biographies, novels,
radio plays and poetry. She won many prizes and awards and was
conferred a Dame in 1993. She died, and is buried, in Tuscany,
Italy.
The inscription The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is taken
from the last page of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: ‘And there was
that day when the inquiring young man came to see Sandy because
of her strange book of psychology, The Transfiguration of the
Commonplace…
Spark ‘transfigures the commonplace’ in every novel: she writes of
ordinary men and women and their domestic, emotional or
psychological problems in a witty, succinct, dark and daring way.
Although her resting place is in Italy, it is fitting that a lasting
memorial to her is in Edinburgh; the city she describes as ‘the place
where I was first understood.’
Sponsored by the Muriel Spark Society