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Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Priz…
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culture · Irish-born British writer and philosopher (1919–1999) · poet · philosopher · novelist · prose writer · biographer · professor · writer · also Iris Murdoch, Dame Iris Murdoch, Jean Iris Murdoch, Murdoch
Born 15 July 1919 · Died 8 February 1999 · Q217495
47 published statements · 0 followers
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“[he] sincerely condemns violence and did not intend to incite the Protestant terrorists. That he is emotional and angry is not surprising, after 12–15 years of murderous IRA activity. All this business is deep in my soul, I”
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SussexWorld: Newly-discovered works by Iris Murdoch in Chichester exhibition
The Guardian: Iris Murdoch artworks from secret room go on display – including self-portrait
The Guardian: Murdoch and Musk in the crosshairs at Venice film festival
The Guardian: Best Australian books out in July: Rupert Murdoch, unhinged short stories and a psychosexual thriller
The Guardian: Iris Murdoch’s poems on bisexuality to be published – read one exclusively here
The Guardian: Iris Murdoch at 100 and Howard Jacobson on humour and shame – books podcast
The Guardian: Iris Murdoch at 100: ‘Her books are full of passion and disaster’
By unveiling a commemorative plaque and postage stamp at her birthplace
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The Guardian: Iris Murdoch’s philosopher was losing his words back in 1983 | Letters
Published “Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 328 diseases and injuries for 195 countries, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016” in The Lancet — cited 6,191 times.
Published “Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 310 diseases and injuries, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015” in The Lancet — cited 5,711 times.
BBC Radio 4 broadcast an Iris Murdoch season, with several memoirs by people who knew her, and dramatisations of her novels:
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Published “Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013” in The Lancet — cited 5,008 times.
The Centre was given 400 letters from Murdoch to the artist Harry Weinberger, a close friend from 1977 until her death in 1999
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Published “Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010” in The Lancet — cited 6,822 times.
Published “Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010” in The Lancet — cited 6,638 times.
The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
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Died 1999-02-08.
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“A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.”
“The cry of equality pulls everyone down.”
As one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century
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Was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature"
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Published “A cell initiating human acute myeloid leukaemia after transplantation into SCID mice” in Nature — cited 3,852 times.
The Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded Murdoch its annual Shakespeare Prize in recognition of her life's work
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Awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1987).
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Was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature
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“I am always disturbed by visiting Ireland - demonic island, so charming & so mad”
Awarded honorary doctor of Caen University (1982).
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Awarded Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea (1978).
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That she felt "unsentimental about Ireland to the point of hatred" and, of a Franco-Irish conference she had attended in Caen in 1982, said that "the sounds of all those Irish voices made me feel privately sick
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“My Irishness is Anglo-Irishness in a very strict sense... People sometimes say to me rudely,”
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
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Was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1987 was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
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Awarded James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1973).
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“Sometimes I feel I have to invent a language to talk to you in, though my heart is very full of definite things to say. You stir some very deep part of my soul. Be patient with me and don”
“can be dull, making little appeal to the imagination.”
When he was a student at the Royal College of Art
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Murdoch married John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at the University of Oxford, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954
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Became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963
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But was refused a visa because she had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1938, while a student at Oxford
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Was transferred first to Brussels, then to Innsbruck, and finally to Graz, Austria, where she worked in a refugee camp
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When she went to work at the Treasury, but remained sympathetic to communism for several years
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Went up to Somerville College, Oxford, with the intention of studying English, but switched to "Greats", a course of study combining classics, ancient history, and philosophy
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And attending Badminton School in Bristol as a boarder from 1932 to 1938
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Born 1919-07-15.
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Enlisted as a soldier in King Edward's Horse and served in France during the First World War before being commissioned as a Second lieutenant
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