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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
