"Iris Murdoch" 1963-05-14. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/anglo-irish-prize-winning-novelist-playwright-and-news-photo/2673348.
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Iris Murdoch
-
Standard Name: Murdoch, Iris
Birth Name: Jean Iris Murdoch
Married Name: Jean Iris Bailey
IM
, active from the second world war till almost the end of the twentieth century, was best known as a philosophical novelist with a wild sense of comedy. Her twenty-six novels foreground philosophic issues similar to those discussed in her well-regarded academic publications. She contributed to many periodicals, and wrote plays for stage and radio, an opera libretto, and poetry.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Dedications | Brigid Brophy | It was still in print in 1988. Waterstone’s Guide to Books. Waterstone and Company, 1988. 530 Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002. 487 |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Bernice Rubens | Peter Conradi
(biographer of Iris Murdoch
) writes that BR
had an affair with an American, Allan Forbes
(partly influenced by the philosopher and family friend Elias Canetti
, who arranged for her and Forbes... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Ann Bridge | In 1928 Owen O'Malley
, with other members of the foreign service, was accused of speculating in francs: what became known as the francs case. His Times obituary suggested that he would have been... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Maureen Duffy | MD
was living with a female partner when in summer 1967 her fellow-novelist Brigid Brophy
fell in love with her. A former lover, Iris Murdoch
, magnanimously hoped that this relationship would prove something stable... |
| Friends, Associates | Barbara Pym | In Oxford, BP
made the acquaintance of Iris Murdoch
, whose writing she admired greatly. Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Holt, Hazel and Hilary PymEditors , Macmillan, 1984. 308 |
| Friends, Associates | A. S. Byatt | Iris Murdoch
became a friend of ASB
by 1968 and an important friend by May 1970. When Byatt was bereaved, Murdoch broke her engagements to be with her. Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002. 518-19 and n106 |
| Friends, Associates | Harriet Shaw Weaver | Working in the left-wing bookshop early in her time at Oxford, HSW
became acquainted with Iris Murdoch
, who was then an undergraduate at Somerville College
and who frequented the shop. Weaver was finishing... |
| Friends, Associates | Elizabeth Bowen | Frequent guests at Bowen's Court (where, says Victoria Glendinning, they ate and drank royally) Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. 254 |
| Friends, Associates | Penelope Lively | |
| Friends, Associates | Olivia Manning | OM
's friends included a number of fellow-writers: William Gerhardi
, Ivy Compton-Burnett
(whom she had first met before the war, at a party given by Rose Macaulay
, and whose work she deeply admired),... |
| Friends, Associates | Brigid Brophy | BB
's close friends included writers Elizabeth Jane Howard
, Shena Mackay
, and Iris Murdoch
, whom she met at Cheltenham in summer 1955. Murdoch's letters to Brophy reveal the depth and many-sidedness of... |
| Friends, Associates | Flannery O'Connor | In 1955 the publication of A Good Man is Hard to Find made a new friend for FOC
. Betty Hester
worked as a clerk and was like her in being a brainy, independent-minded, unmarried... |
| Instructor | Jennifer Dawson | Sent to study political theory for one term with Iris Murdoch
, she spent a whole year studying philosophy under her tuition. She later wrote that Murdoch showed me the springs to drink from. Dawson, Jennifer. “Impressions of Iris Murdoch, Teacher, in 1951”. The Ship, pp. 52 - 3. 52 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Simone de Beauvoir | SB
's many honours during her lifetime included the Sonning Prize for European Culture in 1983, and an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University
. There is a Simone de Beauvoir Institute
at Concordia University
in... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Julian of Norwich | T. S. Eliot
used Julian's words and concepts for the final lines of Little Gidding. Iris Murdoch
claimed her as an influence. She is the subject of a video by Films for the Humanities and Sciences |
Timeline
1826
The Royal Society of Literature
received its charter; it had been founded several years previously.
26 July 1945
The postwar general election put the Labour Party
in power with a landslide victory. Clement Attlee
became Prime Minister; prominent in his Cabinet were Herbert Morrison
, Ernest Bevin
, Hugh Dalton
, and Sir...