Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships and morality.
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The Life and Work of Iris Murdoch
Life
Jean Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1919. and grew up in London. She went to school in Bristol and attended University at Somerville College, Oxford from 1938 until 1942, receiving first-class honors in Classics. Following graduation, she spent two years working in the Treasury during World War II then as an administrative officer with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1949, she was appointed a philosophy lecturer at the university and a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.
Murdoch lived in Steeple Aston, close to Oxford, for many years after marrying Oxford don John Bayley in 1956. After being appointed an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College in 1963, she worked as a part-time lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London for the following four years. In 1986, she relocated to Oxford from Steeple Aston.
Work
In 1953, Murdoch released her first work, a critical analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre, Romantic Rationalist. In 1954, she published her debut piece of fiction, Under the Net, and two years later, The Flight from the Enchanter. Both were respected for their wit, intelligence, and seriousness. These attributes continued to set her work apart, as did a keen sense of humor and a talent for deciphering sophisticated sexual relationships.
She started to gain widespread attention as a novelist in 1958 with the publication of what is arguably her best book, The Bell. With books like A Severed Head, The Red and the Green, Henry and Cato, The Philosopher’s Pupil, and The Green Knight, she went on to have a very successful career.
In 1978 Murdoch won the Booker Prize with her study of vanity and obsession The Sea, The Sea. She also was nominated six further times for A Fairly Honourable Defeat, The Book and the Brotherhood, The Nice and the Good, Bruno’s Dream, The Black Prince and The Good Apprentice.
In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature.
Jackson’s Dilemma was Murdoch’s final book, published in 1995. She was diagnosed around this time with Alzheimer’s disease. In his memoir Elegy for Iris, Murdoch’s husband of 49 years, author John Bayley, detailed her battle with the illness. She died in 1999 aged 79.
Best Irish Murdoch Books to Read
The Bell
Imber Court is a quiet haven for lost souls.
It offers a sanctuary for those who can neither live in the world, nor out of it. But beneath the gentle daily routines of the community run currents of supressed desire, religious yearning and a legend of disastrous love. Charming, indolent Dora arrives in the midst of all this, and half-unwittingly conjures these submerged things to the surface.
The Sea, The Sea
When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him company and Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions.
The Black Prince
Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing, and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher. And so, dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries that will end in his doom.
A Fairly Honourable Defeat
For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda’s tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan’s abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He’s thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention.
The Book and the Brotherhood
It’s the midsummer ball at Oxford, and a group of men and women – friends since university days – have gathered under the stars. Included in this group is David Crimond, a genius and fervent Marxist. Years earlier the friends had persuaded David to write a philosophical and political book on their behalf. But opinions and loyalties have changed, and on this summer evening the long-resting ghosts of the past come careering back into the present.
If you enjoyed The Life and Work of Iris Murdoch, check out Deborah Levy: The Woman Who Sees Everything
