Truman Capote loosely based his 1951 novella on his childhood with spinster aunts in the South.

NEWYORKER: The Grass Harp

Katie's employer, timid spinster Amelia Gregg, is played with spirited delicacy by Margaret Daly.

WSJ: Review: Mint has a subtle revival of 'Katie Roche'

In 1960, she was cast in the role of 36-year-old stay-at-home spinster Esther Hayes in Coronation Street.

BBC: Daphne Oxenford

The most potently written character is Tina, Juliana's repressed spinster niece, inhabited here with great presence by Susan Graham.

WSJ: A Liebestod to Die For | Tristan und Isolde | Houston Grand Opera | By Heidi Waleson

This is the popular picture of the bird-watcher--a dowdy spinster displacing years of unfulfillment onto the sad pursuit of fleeting animals.

FORBES: Wings of Desire

They are no longer young, yet not terribly old, although in that era, a 31-year-old unmarried woman like Sally was considered a hopeless spinster.

WSJ: Review: 'Talley's Folly' is a charming revival

Bonham Carter said that despite her reservations about being too young to play bitter spinster Miss Havisham, Newell had persuaded her she was ideal.

BBC: Bonham Carter: Doubts over Miss Havisham role

Meanwhile, Garnett Walker, an elderly widower with a passion for chestnut trees, feuds no less bitterly with his neighbour, a feisty spinster called Nannie Rawley.

ECONOMIST: Recent American fiction: Where the wild things are | The

Today marks the 150th birthday of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts spinster who was accused of brutally murdering her father and stepmother with a hatchet on August 4, 1892.

FORBES: Austerity Does A Lizzie Borden Number On The Recovery

Pollyanna is a bitter, cynical spinster compared to Kurzweil.

FORBES: Transcendence Versus Collapse: Dueling Views of the Future