Iris Murdoch

• Born: 15 July 1919
• Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
• Died: 8 February 1999
• Best Known As: Alzheimer's stricken author of The Sea, The Sea

Irish-English writer Iris Murdoch's long career as a novelist, playwright, critic and philosophy professor came to an end in the 1990s because of Alzheimer's disease. Murdoch was made a fellow in 1948 of St. Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963. Her writing career began in earnest after she made a splash with her 1953 study of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The next year she published Under the Net, the first of more than two dozen novels. From the 1950s through the 1980s she earned a reputation as a prolific writer and deep thinker, cranking out essays on the art of fiction ("Against Dryness") and moral issues (collected in 1967's The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts), and achieving success with novels such as A Severed Head (1961), The Sea, The Sea (1978) and The Good Apprentice (1985). Her novels are famously chock full of unlikely incidents and complicated storylines, and reveal a belief in the power of art and mythology as a tool to understand something greater than the self. Celebrated especially in England, Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987. In the mid-1990s she began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a development detailed in Elegy for Iris (1998), a book by her husband, writer John Bayley (the book inspired the 2001 film Iris). Her other novels include The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and The Green Knight (1994).

The movie Iris (2001) starred both Kate Winslet and Judi Dench as the author.

For more information on Dame Jean Iris Murdoch, visit Britannica.com.

The works of the novelist and philosopher Jean Iris Murdoch (born 1919) portray characters whose warped and often dreamlike perceptions of reality create suffering among those whose lives they attempt to dominate.

Jean Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin, Ireland, on July 15, 1919. In 1942, she obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honors in the Classical Greats from Oxford University in England. From 1942 to 1944, she worked as assistant principal in the British treasury and from 1944 to 1946, with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Center. In 1947, she returned to her education and obtained a studentship in Philosophy at Cambridge University, also in England. In 1948, she became a tutor at St. Anne's College in Oxford, England; a position she held for the next 20 years.

Murdoch published several philosophical studies during the early 1950s, including one of Jean Paul Sartre, a philosopher to whom she has been compared. She has also written over 50 novels. The first novel was Under the Net (1954), about a man who fails in his personal relationships because he sees the world as a hostile place and people are not completely real to him. In 1956, Murdoch married John Bayley, a novelist and lecturer. Her second novel, The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), is about a rich and powerful man who sees all human relationships as power struggles and uses his power to draw the other characters into his grasp. Murdoch's third novel, The Sandcastle (1957), deals with a man who attempts to free himself from what he considers the death of him; his marriage. The Bell (1958) has a similar theme, except that a young woman decides not to go back to her mate so that she may find herself.

Many of Murdoch's later novels contain themes that are rewritten from her earlier works. For example, A Severed Head (1961) returns to the theme of Flight from the Enchanter: the extent to which human relationships - in this case, sexual ones - are damaged when they are seen as ways to overpower others. An Unofficial Rose (1962), like The Sandcastle, features a hero who feels enslaved by his marriage; while The Unicorn (1963), the study of a passive, guilt-ridden woman who poisons all her relationships by holding to one view of herself is repeated in The Bell. The Italian Girl (1964), The Read and the Green (1965), The Time of the Angels (1966), The Nice and the Good (1968), Bruno's Dream (1969), and A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970). Murdoch often writes novels that involve the fantasy of freedom - often sexual - versus conventional responsibility and the difficulty of establishing loving relationships between equals. Also characteristic of much of her late work are the brooding, dreamlike landscapes and the bizarre turns of plot which have prompted many critics to refer to her as a Gothic novelist.

Even in her later years, Murdoch continues to write rather lengthy, complex, and mind grabbing novels. Her latest titles are Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1982), The Good Apprentice (1986), and The Green Knight (1993). Murdoch has published over 50 titles.

Further Reading

Two useful studies of Iris Murdoch's work are Antonia S. Byatt's Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch (1965), and Peter Wolff's The Disciplined Heart: Iris Murdoch and HerNovels (1966); First Things written by Alan Jacobs (February 1995) discusses Murdoch's later novels. Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human edited by Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker is a collection of essays that examine Murdoch's thoughts on human goodness.

Murdoch, [Jean] Iris (1919-1999), philosopher and novelist. Born in Dublin, of Anglo-Irish parents, she was brought up in London and educated at Badminton and Somerville College, Oxford. From 1948 to 1963 she was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. Only two of her novels are set in Ireland, The Unicorn (1963) and The Red and the Green (1965); nevertheless, Irish people appear more or less prominently in many of her works. Some of these Irish references are ironic or playful, occasionally using stereotypes of charm and irresponsibility, but the country also appears to fascinate her as a place of moral decisiveness. In Under the Net (1954) the hero's friend Finn retreats from the uncertainties of London to his home country. In The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) Emma is preoccupied with conflict in Ireland. Her early novels, Under the Net, The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), The Sandcastle (1957), The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), and An Unofficial Rose (1962), deal with the discovery of freedom and purpose. Her next group of novels, The Unicorn, The Italian Girl (1964), The Red and the Green, and The Time of the Angels (1966), explore in a highly wrought manner questions of self-assertion, artistic creativity, issues of faith, and political conviction. The Nice and the Good (1968) belongs with the third phase of her work, which shows a more subtle discrimination of character and morality. Works of this period are A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); The Black Prince (1973); and the outstanding The Sea, The Sea (1978). Her later works, Nuns and Soldiers (1980), The Philosopher's Pupil, The Good Apprentice (1985), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993) show a looser structure, continuing to investigate the problem of evil. Her philosophical works include Sartre (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992).

Bibliography

Peter J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch: The Saint and the Artist (1986).

Murdoch, Iris Jean (1919-99) English philosopher and novelist. Born in Dublin, and educated at Somerville College, Oxford, Murdoch became Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford in 1948. She is best known as a novelist, but her philosophical writings begin with Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953) and include The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and Metaphysics and Morals (1992). As in many of her novels, she has been centrally concerned philosophically to explore the place of religious thought and morality as Platonic bulwarks against an apparently fragmented and meaningless world.

Quotes:

"But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art."

"Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end."

"Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self."

"Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously."

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us."

"A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the fa?ade of his appearance."

See more famous quotes by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch
Born	15 July 1919 Dublin, Ireland
Died	8 February 1999 (aged 79) Oxfordshire, England
Occupation	Novelist, Philosopher
Writing period	1954-1997
Influences Plato, Sigmund Freud, Simone Weil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marcel Proust, William Shakespeare

Dame Iris Murdoch DBE (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an English author and philosopher, best known for her novels about sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. 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 1 Biography 2 Death 3 Media 4 Writings 5 Controversial biography 6 Bibliography 7 References 8 Further reading 9 References 10 External links

Biography

Jean Iris 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, and her mother, Irene Alice Richardson, who had trained as a singer until Iris was born, was from a middle class, Church of Ireland (Anglican) family from Dublin. When Iris was very young, her parents moved to London, where her father worked in the Civil Service.

She was educated in progressive schools, first 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 attended a number of Ludwig Wittgenstein's lectures. In 1948, she became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, having earlier (1938) joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.^{[citation needed]}

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, the symptoms of which she at first attributed to writer's block.

Death

She died, aged 79, in 1999 and her ashes were scattered in the garden at the Oxford Crematorium. She had no children.

Media

She was portrayed by Kate Winslet and Judi Dench in Richard Eyre's film, Iris (2001), based on Bayley's memories of his wife as she developed Alzheimer's disease. Parts of the movie were filmed at Southwold in Suffolk, one of Murdoch's favourite holiday places.

Writings

She was strongly influenced by philosophers like Plato, Freud, Simone Weil and Sartre, and by the 19th century English and Russian novelists, especially Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as Marcel Proust and Shakespeare. She also met and held discussions with philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Her novels often include upper middle class intellectual males caught in moral dilemmas, gay characters, Anglo-Catholics with crises of faith, empathetic pets, curiously "knowing" children and sometimes a powerful and almost demonic male "enchanter" who imposes his will on the other characters — a type of man Murdoch is said^[1] 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 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), for which Murdoch won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a 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 starred Ian Holm and Richard Attenborough.

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 labelled by Wilson himself as an "anti-biography".^[2] 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), winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), winner of the Whitbread Literary Award for Fiction 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 Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (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) Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (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 of Iris Murdoch, 1998 Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., London 1998 ISBN 0 7156 2848 8

• _________. Iris and Her Friends, 1999
• Laverty, Megan. Iris Murdoch's Ethics: A Consideration of Her Romantic Vision, 2007 ISBN 0826485359.

References

1. ^ Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2001), 350-352
2. ^ Galen Strawson (September 6, 2003). "Telling tales". The Guardian. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,1036391,00.html. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Iris Murdoch

• 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
• Archival material relating to Iris Murdoch listed at the UK National Register of Archives

v • d • e Works by Iris Murdoch Novels: 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 the Profane Love Machine (1974) · A Word Child (1975) · Henry and Cato (1976) · The Sea, the Sea (1978) · 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) Short stories: "Something Special" (1957) 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) · Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986) · The Black Prince (1987) Poetry: A Year of Birds (1978, rev. 1984) · Poems by Iris Murdoch (1997) Philosophy: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) · The Sovereignty of Good (1970) · The Fire and the Sun (1977) · Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) · Existentialists and Mystics (1997)

v • d • e Man Booker Prize for Fiction 1969–1980 P. H. Newby (1969) · Bernice Rubens (1970) · V. S. Naipaul (1971) · John Berger (1972) · James Gordon Farrell (1973) · Nadine Gordimer / Stanley Middleton (1974) · Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) · David Storey (1976) · Paul Scott (1977) · Iris Murdoch (1978) · Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) · William Golding (1980) 1981–2000 Salman Rushdie (1981) · Thomas Keneally (1982) · J. M. Coetzee (1983) · Anita Brookner (1984) · Keri Hulme (1985) · Kingsley Amis (1986) · Penelope Lively (1987) · Peter Carey (1988) · Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) · A. S. Byatt (1990) · Ben Okri (1991) · Michael Ondaatje / Barry Unsworth (1992) · Roddy Doyle (1993) · James Kelman (1994) · Pat Barker (1995) · Graham Swift (1996) · Arundhati Roy (1997) · Ian McEwan (1998) · J. M. Coetzee (1999) · Margaret Atwood (2000) 2001–present Peter Carey (2001) · Yann Martel (2002) · DBC Pierre (2003) · Alan Hollinghurst (2004) · John Banville (2005) · Kiran Desai (2006) · Anne Enright (2007) · Aravind Adiga (2008) · Hilary Mantel (2009)

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