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.
"Iris Murdoch" by Evening Standard/Stringer,1963-05-14.Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/anglo-irish-prize-winning-novelist-playwright-and-news-photo/2673348.
Working in the left-wing bookshop early in her time at Oxford, HSW
became acquainted with Iris Murdoch
, who was then an undergraduate at Somerville College
and who frequented the shop. Weaver was finishing...
Friends, Associates
Penelope Lively
PL
's Oxford circle included the young, still unmarried John Bayley
and Iris Murdoch
.
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, 2002.
518-19 and n106
Having been a teaching...
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, 1978.
OM
's friends included a number of fellow-writers: William Gerhardi
, Ivy Compton-Burnett
(whom she had first met before the war, at a party given by Rose Macaulay
, and whose work she deeply admired),...
Friends, Associates
Flannery O'Connor
In 1955 the publication of A Good Man is Hard to Find made a new friend for FOC
. Betty Hester
worked as a clerk and was like her in being a brainy, independent-minded, unmarried...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Pym
In Oxford, BP
made the acquaintance of Iris Murdoch
, whose writing she admired greatly.
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan, 1984.
308
Family and Intimate relationships
Bernice Rubens
Peter Conradi
(biographer of Iris Murdoch
) writes that BR
had an affair with an American, Allan Forbes
(partly influenced by the philosopher and family friend Elias Canetti
, who arranged for her and Forbes...
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...
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...
Dedications
Brigid Brophy
It was still in print in 1988.
Waterstone’s Guide to Books. Second, Waterstone and Company, 1988.
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, 2002.
