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.
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
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...
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.
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
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completed a novel entitled A Bowl of Cherries, which reuses some parts of her unpublished The Firefly Motel.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...
Reception
Mary Wesley
James Hale
, who had liked her first novel, said that this one stepped forward, in literary terns, roughly a mile from there. I haven't enjoyed reading a novel so much in years. Its line...
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...
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
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
Textual Features
Caroline Blackwood
Critic Val Warner
called CB
a unique voice in twentieth-century British fiction.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
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...