A slender novel but far from flimsy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie enrolls the reader at Edinburgh’s fictional Marcia Blaine School for Girls under the tutelage of one Jean Brodie, a magnetic, unconventional instructor whose favorite pupils—”the Brodie set”—are set apart from the rest of the student body by their superior attitudes and their intellectual awareness. The archly, tartly narrated adventures of these young girls and their eccentric, autocratic leader form a delightful group portrait, and something more: an immortal parable of the temptations of charisma and the dangers of power.
All-TIME 100 Novels
Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
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- The Adventures of Augie March
- All the King’s Men
- American Pastoral
- An American Tragedy
- Animal Farm
- Appointment in Samarra
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
- The Assistant
- At Swim-Two-Birds
- Atonement
- Beloved
- The Berlin Stories
- The Big Sleep
- The Blind Assassin
- Blood Meridian
- Brideshead Revisited
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
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