A PUBLIC appeal has been launched to raise £250,000 so that the final part of the Dame Muriel Spark archive can be revealed to the public.

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) agreed to the fee with Spark's long-time companion, Penelope Jardine, who is her heir and literary executor.

The library has one of the one of the largest and most comprehensive archives of the author, amassing a large amount of her personal papers and works over a 50 year period.

There is now one tranche of her archive which remains unseen since her death in 2006, which is now in storage in Edinburgh after been packed in 120 boxes at the home she shared with Jardine in Tuscany.

Under the condition of the sale, the library must raise a fee of £250,000 over the next few months so that the archive can feature in a major exhibition in 2018, which will be the 100th anniversary of the author's birth.

Wealthy donors and dedicated fans are even being offered a first look inside the boxes in return for a substantial donation.

Sally Harrower, manuscripts curator at the NLS, said: "We already had a large bulk of the Dame Muriel Spark archives here and it's by far the biggest modern literary archive that we have.

"There does seem to be a groundswell of interest in her work at the moment, just going by the number of enquiries we get about her archive.

"We hope to raise the money as soon as possible, possibly by early next year."

Dame Muriel Spark wrote 22 novels of the course of her lifetime, which include perhaps her best known, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, in 1961.

Her earliest papers date from the 1940s, after she made a decision to keep all kinds of documentary evidence, and include diaries, accounts and cheque books, and tens of thousands of letters.

She had know Jardine, an artist and sculptor, since 1968, who had started out as her secretary.

Growing close, the pair moved to Tuscany together in 1979 where Spark spent her remaining years, however both women denied rumours of any kind of romantic relationship.