Murdoch, Dame Iris

▪ 2000

      British author and philosopher (b. July 15, 1919, Dublin, Ire.—d. Feb. 8, 1999, Oxford, Eng.), wrote more than 25 novels that were distinguished by a mixture of vivid storytelling, cultural allusions, and complex philosophical inquiry. Murdoch composed novels on a grand scale, with the influence of Shakespeare and such 19th-century realists as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henry James reverberating throughout her works, and she earned a reputation as one of the most erudite writers of the latter part of the 20th century. A master spinner of plots as well as a sophisticated philosophical thinker, Murdoch explored the intricacies of human relationships, the moral confusion of the contemporary world, and the difficult struggle to attain goodness while she blended realism with fantastic elements, symbolism, and myth. Murdoch studied the classics, ancient history, and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, earning first-class honours in 1942. Between 1944 and 1946 she worked with World War II refugees in Belgium and Austria as an officer for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1948 she was appointed to a teaching fellowship at St. Anne's College, Oxford, where she lectured in philosophy for 15 years. Though Murdoch was acquainted with Jean-Paul Sartre and had studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein, her lasting allegiance in both philosophy and fiction was to the moral theories of Platonism. She was the author of several philosophical texts, notably Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), The Sovereignty of Good (1970), and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). Her creative efforts, however, were mainly focused on her novels, and she received accolades for The Bell (1958), considered to be the finest work of her early period, A Severed Head (1961), A Fairly Honorable Defeat (1970), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), and The Book and the Brotherhood (1987). She was awarded the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea (1978), the Whitbread Award for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince (1973). The troubling formlessness of her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma (1995), was a sad harbinger of her encroaching Alzheimer's disease.

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▪ British writer and philosopher

original name in full  Jean Iris Murdoch , married name  Mrs. John O. Bayley  

born July 15, 1919, Dublin, Ireland

died February 8, 1999, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England

 British novelist and philosopher noted for her psychological novels that contain philosophical and comic elements.

      After an early childhood spent in London, Murdoch went to Badminton School, Bristol, and from 1938 to 1942 studied at Somerville College, Oxford. Between 1942 and 1944 she worked in the British Treasury and then for two years as an administrative officer with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1948 she was elected a fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford.

      Murdoch's first published work was a critical study, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953). This was followed by two novels, Under the Net (1954) and The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), that were admired for their intelligence, wit, and high seriousness. These qualities, along with a rich comic sense and a gift for analyzing the tensions and complexities in sophisticated sexual relationships, continued to distinguish her work. With what is perhaps her finest book, The Bell (1958), Murdoch began to attain wide recognition as a novelist. She went on to a highly prolific career with such novels as A Severed Head (1961), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Sea, the Sea (1978, Booker Prize), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993). Murdoch's last novel, Jackson's Dilemma (1995), was not well received; some critics attributed the novel's flaws to the Alzheimer's disease with which she had been diagnosed in 1994. Murdoch's husband, the novelist John Bayley, chronicled her struggle with the disease in his memoir, Elegy for Iris (1999).

      Murdoch's novels typically have convoluted plots in which innumerable characters representing different philosophical positions undergo kaleidoscopic changes in their relations with each other. Realistic observations of 20th-century life among middle-class professionals are interwoven with extraordinary incidents that partake of the macabre, the grotesque, and the wildly comic. The novels illustrate Murdoch's conviction that although human beings think they are free to exercise rational control over their lives and behaviour, they are actually at the mercy of the unconscious mind, the determining effects of society at large, and other, more inhuman, forces. In addition to producing novels, Murdoch wrote plays, verse, and works of philosophy and literary criticism.

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