Muriel Spark has died at the age of 88 in Tuscany. Her most famous novels are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means.

“The Girls of Slender Means,” considered by many to be her best novel, was published in 1963, drawing on her experience as a young woman struggling to make ends meet while writing in London. “I was literally starving,” she once said. “It was awful. I had nothing to eat.” Novelist Graham Greene gave her an allowance of 20 pounds a month and some wine when she was poverty-stricken, on condition that she did not thank him or pray for him.

An interesting thing about her writing process: “She would never use a pen anyone else had touched.”