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'Dame Jean Iris Murdoch' (July 15, 1919 – February 8, 1999) was a Dublin-born writer and philosopher, best known for her novels, which combine rich characterization and compelling plotlines, usually involving ethical or sexual themes. Her first published novel, ''Under the Net'', was selected in 2001 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Contents

Biography

Novels

Controversial biography

Bibliography

Fiction

Philosophy

Plays

Poetry

References

Further reading

External links

Biography

Murdoch was born at 59 Blessington Street, Dublin, Ireland, on 15 July, 1919. Her father, Wills John Hughes Murdoch, came from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down (near Belfast), and her mother, Irene Alice Richardson, who had trained as a singer until her birth, was from a middle class, Church of Ireland family from Dublin. At a young age, Murdoch's parents moved her to London where her father worked in the Civil Service. Murdoch was educated in progressive schools, firstly, at the Froebel Demonstration School, and then as a boarder at the Badminton School in Bristol in 1932. She went on to read classics, ancient history, and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, and philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1948, she became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.
She wrote her first novel, ''Under the Net'' in 1954, having previously published essays on philosophy, including the first study in English of Jean-Paul Sartre. It was at Oxford in 1956 that she met and married John Bayley, a professor of English literature and also a novelist. She went on to produce 25 more novels and other works of philosophy and drama until 1995, when she began to suffer the early effects of Alzheimer's disease, which she at first attributed to writer's block. She died at 79 in 1999.
She was portrayed by Kate Winslet and Judi Dench in Richard Eyre's film, ''Iris'' (2001), based on Bayley's memoirs of his wife as she developed Alzheimer's disease. Parts of the movie were filmed at Southwold in Suffolk one of Murdoch's favourite places to holiday.

Novels

Murdoch's novels are by turns intense and bizarre, filled with dark humor and unpredictable plot twists, undercutting the civilized surface of the usually upper-class milieu in which her characters are observed. Above all they deal with issues of morality, and the conflicts between good and evil are often presented in mundane scenes that gain mythic and tragic force through the subtlety with which they are depicted. Though intellectually sophisticated, her novels are often melodramatic and comedic, rooted, she famously said, in the desire to tell a "jolly good yarn." She was strongly influenced by philosophers like Plato, Freud, Simone Weil and Sartre, and by the 19th century English and Russian novelists, especially Fydor Dostoevsky, as well as Marcel Proust and Shakespeare. She also met and held discussions with philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Her novels often include gay characters, empathetic pets, and sometimes a powerful and almost demonic male "enchanter" who imposes his will on the other characters — a type of man Murdoch is said to have modeled on her lover, the Nobel laureate, Elias Canetti.
Although she wrote primarily in a realistic manner, on occasion Murdoch would introduce ambiguity into her work through a sometimes misleading use of symbolism, and by mixing elements of fantasy within her precisely described scenes. ''The Unicorn'' (1963) can be read and enjoyed as a sophisticated Gothic romance, or as a novel with Gothic trappings, or perhaps as a parody of the Gothic mode of writing. ''The Black Prince'' (1973) is a remarkable study of erotic obsession, and the text becomes more complicated, suggesting multiple interpretations, when subordinate characters contradict the narrator and the mysterious "editor" of the book in a series of afterwords.
Murdoch was awarded the Booker Prize in 1978 for ''The Sea, the Sea'', a finely detailed novel about the power of love and loss, featuring a retired stage director who is overwhelmed by jealousy when he meets his erstwhile lover after several decades apart.
Several of her works have been adapted for the screen, including the British television series of her novels ''An Unofficial Rose'' and ''The Bell''. J. B. Priestley dramatized her 1961 novel, ''A Severed Head'', which was directed by Richard Attenborough in 1971, and starred Ian Holm.

Controversial biography

A controversial account of Murdoch's life was given by the British writer A.N. Wilson in his 2003 book ''Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her''. The work was described by ''The Guardian'' as "mischievously revelatory" and "quite spectacularly rude," and labeled by Wilson himself as an "anti-biography" (see [1]). Though he was careful to stress his current and past affection for his subject, Wilson did not flinch from writing of her disloyalty and promiscuity. He observed that she "thrived on acts of betrayal", was cruel, and was "prepared to go to bed with almost anyone" (Wilson 2003).

Bibliography

Fiction

★ ''Under the Net'' (1954)

★ ''The Flight from the Enchanter'' (1956)

★ ''The Sandcastle'' (1957)

★ ''The Bell'' (1958)

★ ''A Severed Head'' (1961)

★ ''An Unofficial Rose'' (1962)

★ ''The Unicorn'' (1963)

★ ''The Italian Girl'' (1964)

★ ''The Red and the Green'' (1965)

★ ''The Time of the Angels'' (1966)

★ ''The Nice and the Good'' (1968)

★ ''Bruno's Dream'' (1969)

★ ''A Fairly Honourable Defeat'' (1970)

★ ''An Accidental Man'' (1971)

★ ''The Black Prince'' (1973)

★ ''The Sacred and Profane Love Machine'' (1974)

★ ''A Word Child'' (1975)

★ ''Henry and Cato'' (1976)

★ ''The Sea, the Sea'' (1978), winner of the Booker Prize

★ ''Nuns and Soldiers'' (1980)

★ ''The Philosopher's Pupil'' (1983)

★ ''The Good Apprentice'' (1985)

★ ''The Book and the Brotherhood'' (1987)

★ ''The Message to the Planet'' (1989)

★ ''The Green Knight'' (1993)

★ ''Jackson's Dilemma'' (1995)

★ ''Something Special'' (Short story reprint, 1999; originally published 1957)

Philosophy

★ '' (1953)

★ ''The Sovereignty of Good'' (1970)

★ ''The Fire and the Sun'' (1977)

★ ''Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals'' (1992)

★ ''Existentialists and Mystics'' (1997)

Plays

★ ''A Severed Head'' (with J.B. Priestley, 1964)

★ ''The Italian Girl'' (with James Saunders, 1969)

★ ''The Three Arrows & The Servants and the Snow'' (1973)

★ ''The Servants'' (1980)

★ '' (1986)

★ ''The Black Prince'' (1987)

Poetry

★ ''A Year of Birds'' (1978; revised edition, 1984)

★ ''Poems by Iris Murdoch'' (1997)

References

★ Conradi, P.J. ''Iris Murdoch: A Life'', 2001

★ "Telling tales" by AN Wilson, ''The Guardian'', September 6, 2003

★ "I'm Mr. Evil" by Matt Seaton, ''The Guardian'', September 3, 2003

Further reading

★ Bayley, J. ''Elegy for Iris'', 1999

★ _________. ''Iris: A Memoir'', 1998

★ _________. ''Iris and Her Friends'', 1999

★ Wilson, A.N. ''Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her'', 2003

External links

★ The Iris Murdoch Building at the Dementia Services Development Centre, University of Stirling

★ A Review of ''Something Special''

★ The Iris Murdoch Society

★ The Centre for Iris Murdoch Studies

★ Extract of Conradi biography at Guardian Unlimited

★ Collated reviews of Conradi biography

★ Collated reviews of AN Wilson biography

★ A series of Iris Murdoch walks in London

★ A review of the movie, Iris