Iris Murdoch

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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 ascending Author name Excerpt
Wealth and Poverty Elspeth Huxley
In 1970 EH and her husband decided to sell the house, Woodfolds, as well, and move into Green End, the cottage at the end of the drive.
Nicholls, C. S. Elspeth Huxley. HarperCollins.
357, 375
Meanwhile in the year of selling...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Muriel Jaeger
This book is sometimes called a memoir, but its autobiographical moments are only incidental. MJ 's attention is mostly directed towards books and reading; her own experiences of writing, publishing, and having her works performed...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Alison Uttley
Among later literary judgements, she pronounced Iris Murdoch 's The Bell (published in November 1958) brilliant . . . the characterisation, presentation, perfectation. But too much homosexuality.
Judd, Denis. Alison Uttley. Michael Joseph.
212
Theme or Topic Treated in Text A. S. Byatt
The writers considered (each for a single novel) are Jane Austen , Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot , Willa Cather (for nine of whose works ASB also wrote Virago introductions),
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Iris Murdoch , and Toni Morrison .
Textual Production Monica Furlong
MF returned to the controversy surrounding the issue of women's ordination in A Dangerous Delight: Women and Power in the Church. The first three words of her title come from Iris Murdoch 's The...
Textual Production Monica Furlong
It is the exercise of power which Murdoch calls a dangerous delight. Furlong quotes this passage as epigraph along with a remark by Daphne Hampson : that religion is the most potent ideology the world...
Textual Production Susan Hill
SH edited People: Essays & Poems, issued to benefit Oxfam . Contributors (including Iris Murdoch , Margaret Drabble , Anne Ridler , and Elizabeth Longford ) were invited to write about someone influential in their life.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Hill, Susan, editor. People: Essays & Poems. Chatto and Windus.
prelims
Textual Production A. S. Byatt
ASB published her first book of literary criticism, Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch; it was also the first full-length study of Murdoch.
Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. A.S. Byatt. Twayne.
129, 151
Textual Production Daphne Du Maurier
She refused to let anyone write an introduction, and was outraged that her publishers suggested Iris Murdoch as one possible candidate for this role. DDM did not care for Murdoch and was disdainful about her...
Textual Features Joan Aiken
JA also published a number of adult thrillers, romantic novels, and hybrids between these two genres. For these, as for her children's fiction, she favours settings in time or place which are either exotic or...
Textual Features Caroline Blackwood
Critic Val Warner called CB a unique voice in twentieth-century British fiction.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
65: 38
A press handout on Nancy Schoenberger 's biography likens Blackwood's work to that of Edna O'Brien , Muriel Spark , Iris Murdoch
Textual Features A. S. Byatt
This discusses Murdoch's first eight novels. An enlarged Vintage paperback reprint of about thirty years later, entitled Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch, adds ASB 's later writings on Murdoch: essays...
Textual Features Elizabeth Bowen
It is her only work set in the USA. Its protagonist is an orphan heroine, who hates her own gender and has an endless capacity for causing trouble. She is the first of EB
Reception Barbara Pym
Pym is not one of those women writers whose stock has risen through feminist re-evaluation. Five years after the influential Times Literary Supplement article was published, Penelope Lively wrote, I am always surprised that the...
Reception Kathleen Raine
KR declined the invitation of the Royal Society of Literature to become a Companion of Literature, saying the companionship had been cheapened by its award to the journalistsIris Murdoch and Anthony Burgess .
Watts, Janet. “Kathleen Raine”. The Guardian, p. 25.
25

Timeline

1826: The Royal Society of Literature received...

Writing climate item

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...

National or international item

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...

Texts

Murdoch, Iris. A Fairly Honourable Defeat. Chatto and Windus, 1970.
Murdoch, Iris. A Severed Head. Chatto and Windus, 1961.
Murdoch, Iris, and J. B. Priestley. A Severed Head. Chatto and Windus, 1963.
Murdoch, Iris. A Word Child. Chatto and Windus, 1975.
Murdoch, Iris, and Reynolds Stone. A Year Of Birds. Compton Press, 1978.
Murdoch, Iris. “Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch”. Encounter, pp. 16-20.
Murdoch, Iris. An Accidental Man. Chatto and Windus, 1971.
Murdoch, Iris. An Unofficial Rose. Chatto and Windus, 1962.
Murdoch, Iris. Bruno’s Dream. Chatto and Windus, 1969.
Murdoch, Iris. “Existentialists and Mystics”. Essays and Poems Presented to Lord David Cecil, edited by William Wallace Robson, Constable, 1970.
Murdoch, Iris. Existentialists and Mystics. Delos Press, 1993.
Murdoch, Iris. Existentialists and Mystics. Editor Conradi, Peter J., Chatto and Windus, 1997.
Murdoch, Iris. Henry and Cato. Chatto and Windus, 1976.
Murdoch, Iris. Jackson’s Dilemma. Chatto and Windus, 1995.
Murdoch, Iris. Living on Paper. Editors Horner, Avril and Ann Rowe, Chatto and Windus, 2015.
Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Chatto and Windus, 1992.
Murdoch, Iris. Nuns and Soldiers. Chatto and Windus, 1980.
Murdoch, Iris. Sartre: Romantic Rationalist. Bowes and Bowes, 1953.
Murdoch, Iris. The Bell. Chatto and Windus, 1958.
Murdoch, Iris. The Black Prince. Chatto and Windus, 1973.
Murdoch, Iris. The Book and the Brotherhood. Chatto and Windus, 1987.
Murdoch, Iris. The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Clarendon Press, 1977.
Murdoch, Iris. The Flight From the Enchanter. Chatto and Windus, 1956.
Murdoch, Iris. The Good Apprentice. Chatto and Windus, 1985.
Murdoch, Iris. The Green Knight. Chatto and Windus, 1993.