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
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...
Reception Enid Bagnold
EB was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1970, and awarded a CBE in 1976, at the same time as Iris Murdoch .
Berney, Kathryn A., editor. Contemporary Women Dramatists. St. James Press.
10
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 Samuel Beckett
Dylan Thomas called this novel Freud ian blarney: Sodom and Begorrah.
Parker, Peter, editor. The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers. Fourth Estate and Helicon.
59
Iris Murdoch recorded the lasting impression which it made on her when she first read it.
Federman, Raymond, and John Fletcher. Samuel Beckett. University of California Press.
21
Harold Pinter —who while trying to...
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
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.
254
included William Plomer , Sean O'Faolain , and Cyril Connolly . Virginia Woolf stayed there once; Iris Murdoch also...
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
Literary responses Elizabeth Bowen
Glendinning writes: She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark .
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Christine Brooke-Rose
This novel uses medieval allegory to resolve the linguistic, psychological, and intellectual fragmentation of its heroine, Julia.
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press.
25
Much of it is set in the reading room of the British Library (at this date situated...
Reception Anita Brookner
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...
Dedications Brigid Brophy
It was still in print in 1988.
Waterstone’s Guide to Books. Waterstone and Company.
530
BB dedicated it to Iris Murdoch and inscribed a copy to her with a jokey, suggestive inscription.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
487
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.
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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.