Iris Murdoch

15 July 1919 - 08 February 1999

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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. 487
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...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Shaw Weaver	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. 254 included William Plomer , Sean O'Faolain , and Cyril Connolly . Virginia Woolf stayed there once; Iris Murdoch also...
Friends, Associates	Olivia Manning	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
Friends, Associates	Brigid Brophy	BB 's close friends included writers Elizabeth Jane Howard , Shena Mackay , and Iris Murdoch , whom she met at Cheltenham in summer 1955. Murdoch's letters to Brophy reveal the depth and many-sidedness of...
Instructor	Jennifer Dawson	Sent to study political theory for one term with Iris Murdoch , she spent a whole year studying philosophy under her tuition. She later wrote that Murdoch showed me the springs to drink from. Dawson, Jennifer. “Impressions of Iris Murdoch, Teacher, in 1951”. The Ship, Vol. 91 , 2001–2002, pp. 52-3. 52
Intertextuality and Influence	Julian of Norwich	T. S. Eliot used Julian's words and concepts for the final lines of Little Gidding. Iris Murdoch claimed her as an influence. She is the subject of a video by Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Intertextuality and Influence	Sarah Waters	SW puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...

Timeline

1826

The Royal Society of Literature received its charter; it had been founded several years previously.

“Companions of Literature”. Royal Society of Literature.

Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 23rd ed., Ward, Lock, 1904.

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.