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.
Black-and-white photo of Iris Murdoch in May 1963. Looking intently, off-camera, she is wearing a black blazer with a striped shirt underneath and has short hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Brigid Brophy
Murdoch thought it a lovely handsome clever book, with excellence on every page . . . . You must be the first person who has described sexual intercourse beautifully and well in a book. I...
Literary responses Brigid Brophy
In her journal (where literary praise is rare) Iris Murdoch recorded her enjoyment of The Finishing Touch. Murdoch reviewed The Snow Ball, calling it very beautiful and praising its sheer artistic insolence.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
487
Literary responses Brigid Brophy
Seven years after its publication Iris Murdoch named this novel to the Times Literary Supplement as deserving to be better known.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
487n64
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
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.
518-19 and n106
Having been a teaching...
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...
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 .
Leisure and Society Ivy Compton-Burnett
ICB was scathing about the work of some younger novelists, like Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark (though she took Murdoch more seriously than Spark).
Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen.
86, 93-4
In her years alone she became very fond of...
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, Vol.
91
, pp. 52-3.
52
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...
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...
Performance of text T. S. Eliot
Before this female roles were taken by faculty wives or professional actresses. Iris Murdoch played the Leader of the Chorus in this production.
Literary responses Margaret Forster
In a National Women's Register poll of members to determine the best woman writer of the twentieth century, MF came third with twenty-one votes, just behind Margaret Atwood with twenty-five and just ahead of Enid Blyton
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Murdoch, Iris. The Italian Girl. Chatto and Windus, 1964.
Murdoch, Iris. The Message to the Planet. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
Murdoch, Iris. The Nice and the Good. Chatto and Windus, 1968.
Murdoch, Iris. The One Alone. Colophon Press with Old Town Books, 1995.
Murdoch, Iris. The Philosopher’s Pupil. Chatto and Windus, 1983.
Murdoch, Iris. The Red and the Green. Chatto and Windus, 1965.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sacred and Profane Love Machine. Chatto and Windus, 1974.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sandcastle. Chatto and Windus, 1957.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sea, The Sea. Chatto and Windus, 1978.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Murdoch, Iris. “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”. Yale Review, pp. 247-71.
Murdoch, Iris. The Time of the Angels. Chatto and Windus, 1966.
Murdoch, Iris. The Unicorn. Chatto and Windus, 1963.
Murdoch, Iris. Under the Net. Chatto and Windus, 1954.