Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Among other evaluations, Olga Kenyon
admired AB
's capacity to represent the interiority and social frustrations of gifted undervalued women:
Skinner, John. The Fictions of Anita Brookner: Illusions of Romance. Macmillan.
2
women with twentieth-century awareness of their problems, which however are problems unchanged since...
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
Reception
Kathleen Raine
Iris Murdoch
bought this book as a present for her mentor Donald MacKinnon
.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
258
Publishing
Shena Mackay
Before Babies in Rhinestones appeared, SM
completed a novel entitled A Bowl of Cherries, which reuses some parts of her unpublished The Firefly Motel. She submitted this, her first novel for over a...
politics
Marghanita Laski
On 30 October 1958 ML
was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor of theTimes urging the government to cease testing nuclear weapons; others who signed included Peggy Ashcroft
, Storm Jameson
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.
Occupation
Rebecca West
The prize went to P. H. Newby
's Something to Answer For, which according to Kermode years later was a compromise decision. Dame Rebecca didn't dislike it as much as nearly all the others...
Occupation
Elizabeth Jane Howard
In winter 1953 EJH
, aged about thirty, became an editor at Chatto and Windus
, which was then run by Norah Smallwood
and Ian Parsons
. She read submitted manuscripts, wrote reports on them...
Literary responses
Brigid Brophy
Reviewers were hard on this book (it made them nervous, wrote Iris Murdoch
). Murdoch responded by drafting a blurb: Miss Brophy has written an ambitious serious disturbing book. It is rich, original and witty...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH
's stepson and fellow novelist Martin Amis
has written that Howard (with Iris Murdoch
) was the most interesting woman writer of her generation.
Amis, Martin. Experience. Jonathan Cape.
215
Literary responses
Muriel Spark
The London theatre critics were scathing, with only two exceptions (though one of these, Harold Hobson
, carried a lot of weight). Pamela Hansford Johnson
trounced the play on the BBC
's radio programme The...
Literary responses
Brigid Brophy
One review was headed And Then There Were Fifty-One. Iris Murdoch
's low opinion caused a temporary rift in her friendship with the author.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
488
Literary responses
Marina Warner
Critics admired the novel for its skilled use of plot, characterisation, and lyrical descriptions. Some compared MW
to Iris Murdoch
.
Moseley, Merritt, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 194. Gale Research.
194: 284
Literary responses
Ada Leverson
The reviewer for British Book News felt that the appeal of AL
's works lay in the grace of their prose, the wit of their dialogue, and the rich elegance of their period [Edwardian] setting...
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.
