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Iris Murdoch resources on the Web

A Under the Net     J Time of the Angels  S The Sea, The Sea
B Flight/Enchanter  K Nice and the Good   T Nuns and Soldiers
C The Sandcastle    L Bruno's Dream       U Ph'sopher's Pupil
D The Bell          M F Hon'ble Defeat    V Good Apprentice
E A Severed Head    N An Accidental Man   W Book & Br'erhood
F Unofficial Rose   O The Black Prince    X Message to Planet
G The Unicorn       P S&P; Love Machine    Y The Green Knight
H The Italian Girl  Q A Word Child        Z Jackson's Dilemma
I Red & the Green   R Henry and Cato

Jul 2002: Iris Murdoch's London [map]

Jan 2002: Josephine Hart memoir [etext]

Sept 2001: Conradi's new bio [extract] Yale, Updike, review, ditto, ditto, ditto

May 2001: Movie being filmed with young Iris played by Kate Winslet! [info]

Bayley still frisky; remarried (long) (movie to be directed by Richard Eyre?); friskiness fictionalised

Posthumous short story, "Something Special" NYTimes rev

Dench project still slated for 2001

Mailing-list archives: http://www.egroups.com/group/iris_murdoch/

Political scandal? http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/00/02/20/stiboobnw01001.html?999

Was saintly Iris Murdoch a rabid political extremist, long before Alzheimer's could explain any outbursts? Writing to the London Review of Books [letter], biographer Jeremy Treglown recalls raising the issue of striking miners with her in the early 1980s. "I think they should be put up against a wall and shot," declared the author of The Sovereignty of Good.

Bayley donates Iris's brain for Alzheimer's research: http://www.yahoo.co.uk/headlines/19990801/news/news_story_98567s_5.html

In a newspaper interview, Prof Bayley, a former professor of English literature at Oxford University, said he and his wife talked about the decision during her final months.

Biopic planned: [update]

Now comes word from the publisher, Duckworth, that "Iris, a Memoir" will be made into a film, or in its words, "a big movie, a bit like 'Shadowlands.' " But over here, we mostly love the news that Dame Judi Dench will play Iris Murdoch.

Dench's filmography at IMDb

1890: 26Apr: Wills John Hughes Murdoch (father) born [pjc4]
1899: 29Mar: Irene Alice Richardson (mother) born [pjc19]
1918: 22Oct: approx date of IM's conception
1918: 07Dec: parents married in Dublin [pjc14]

1919: 15Jul: Jean Iris Murdoch born at 59 Blessington Street in Dublin [astrol] (only child, father civil servant, cavalry officer in WWI; mother had trained as an opera singer; together "a perfect trinity of love"). Lifelong sympathies with Protestants in Irish troubles.

Moves to London (Hammersmith and Chiswich); Badminton School, Bristol

1928: "compulsive writer since the age of nine"

1934: translates Horace [pjc75]

"What graceful boy in fragrant odours steeped,
'Mid crimson roses in a cavern dim,
Worships your smile..."

1937: untitled poem [pjc77]

"And I watch for the bended bow of the Milky Way
Over London asleep"

1937: edits children's anthology 'Poet Venturers' with foreword by Auden [pjc78]

1938: 02Apr: meets cousin James Henderson Scott after a year of romantic correspondence [pjc80] (no sparks)

1938: studies classics, ancient history and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. Specialised in Greek vase painting. [pjc87] tutor calls her 'my shaggy little Shetland pony'

IM on Oxford, 1938-39: "Those people just didn't care a damn-- and they lived vividly, individually, wildly, beautifully." [pjc109]

1938-1943? member of Communist Party [pjc89]

1938: autumn: 18yo Noel Martin besotted by IM [pjc97]
1938: Nov: spotted by 18yo Frank Thompson [pjc90]

"...there was something about her warm green dress, her long yellow locks like a cavalier's, and her gentle profile..."

1938: Nov: also admired by 22yo David Hicks "a fairy-tale princess [with] a quaint virginity cult" [pjc96]

no-date: friendship with Leo Pliatzky: "Pretty and buxom, with blonde hair and dirndl skirts." [pjc96]

1939: Mar: FT: "I've met my dream-girl-- a poetic Irish Communist who's doing Honour Mods. I worship her." [pjc93] (unrequited)

1939: spring: poem 'Oxford Lament' [pjc98]

"Deliver me from the usual thing,
The clever inevitability of the conversation,
The brilliant platitudes and second-hand
Remarks about life...
O for the tangent terror
Of the metaphor no one has used--
The keenness of cutting edges
On fresh green ice of thought."

1939: summer: IM: "I long to get married. I'd do anything to get married." [pjc95] (had rejected six proposals that spring alone)

1939: Aug: two weeks singing and performing skits with Magpie Players; 100-page journal [pjc101] (beautifully recites 'Tam Lin' in low, mellow voice)

"Riding on running boards when the car is going a good forty is most exhilarating sport."

1939: Sep: Frank Thompson enlists [pjc109]

1939: IM painting, incl 'Ulysses' beside a jar of flowers [pjc112]

1940: scheduled to play Polixenes in 'Winter's Tale' [pjc98] (likely cancelled)

1940? Denis Healey calls IM "this latter-day Joan-of-Arc" [pjc111]

1940: Jun: IM plays Leader of Chorus in 'Murder in the Cathedral' [pjc91]

1941: Mar? Frank sails from England (to war) [pjc111]

no-date: IM to FT: [pjc159]

"I feel generally iconoclastic, and the eikon I most want to smash is the pretty golden image inside myself I've preserved so carefully... I want to hurl myself down into the melee & the mud & I dont care how filthy it is..."

1942: summer: befriends 22yo Philippa Bosanquet (Foot) [pjc127]

1942: asst principal at Treasury

1943: Jan: loses virginity, probably with Noel Eldridge [pjc156] (he married later that year and was killed in 1944)

1943: spring? IM to Vera Hoar: [pjc162]

"Go and sleep with some man... it's a technique that has to be learnt."

1944-46: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in London, Belgium and Austria

1940s: meets Sartre

Many lovers: An early boyfriend was Frank Thompson, brother of the historian and peace campaigner E. P. Thompson, under whose influence she joined the Communist Party; after the war she became involved with Raymond Queneau, the mathematician and novelist; Sartre; and the Nobel winning novelist Elias Canetti. Was she in love with them? "I admired the men I was involved with for their personalities and their minds," she said later. "I both wished and needed to learn from them." (Times obit)

Canetti: "Murdoch's "Wise Man" figure would seem to be largely based on Elias Canetti, a Ladinospeaking polymath of Bulgarian origin who washed up in England [in 1939] and under whose spell Iris Murdoch languished for many years. Something of a genius, something of a charlatan, his presence broods over many of her novels, down to the character of Peter Mir in The Green Knight." [This Is London]

1945: Nov: engaged to David Hicks [pjc216] jilted by Feb [pjc202]

1946: non-sexual friendship with Raymond Queneau

RQ on IM: "Irishwoman. Big. Blonde. Common-sensical. A little bun. A peaked cap. A decided walk, somewhat heavy, military. Beautiful eyes, charming smile..." [pjc233]

1946: refused permission to take up a scholarship at Vassar when she admits Communist affiliations on visa application; year of poverty and suicidal depression [pjc246]

1947: Postgrad studentship in philosophy under Wittgenstein

1948: Elected fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford

1948-63: Tutor at Oxford (given up because she found it "a great strain")

1949: 27Oct: abandons novel 'Our Lady of the Bosky Gates' [pjc380]

1954: Diary entry for 3 June: "St Antony's Dance. Fell down the steps, and seem to have fallen in love with J[ohn Bayley]. We didn't dance much." Bayley's version: "We talked without stopping... endless, childish chatter... seeming to invent on the spot, as we talked, a whole infantile language of our own." [EfI]

1956: Marries John Bayley, professor of English at Oxford (living first at Steeple Ashton, then North Oxford, in "a famously chaotic household"-- they never cleaned). "He took charge of the cooking and she did the shopping. They were both excellent dancers and devilish poker players. They knew by heart the popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s and they enjoyed travel."

c1957: one month fellowship at Yale

c1962: time at McMaster U in Canada, visit to Chicago

1963-67: Lecturer at the Royal College of Art.

1974: Whitbread Prize for "The Sacred and Profane Love Machine"

1976: CBE award

1977? Nearly drowns at Dorset [EfI says c1985, but inspired sequence in book]

1978: Booker Prize for "The Sea, The Sea"

1982: donates to Hungarian activist organization [passim]

1987: Made Dame Iris Murdoch (shocking to liberal friends)

1992? Honored at U of Chicago Divinity School for the religious depth of her novels [Essay]

1998: Alzheimers revealed; first tv acquired

1999, February 8: Times obit, BBC obit, AP obit, another obit

Peter Conradi (a close friend) is completing a full-length biography of Iris.

Sources: bio sketch, and another, and a fan page. Also "Elegy for Iris" [EfI].

A misleading claim she's an atheist. Times obit: "She was no believer in God, but wrote: "I have wanted to move from 'God' to 'Good', taking 'religion' along too.""

Writers she liked: Shakespeare, James, Tolstoy and Eliot. Lord of the Rings, Tale of Genji, DH Lawrence, TE Lawrence, Alice in Wonderland, Tintin comics, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Proust [EfI]

eBay search

Amazon page

Encyclopedia Britannica article

Novels

"She once said of her work that she tried to convey the unique strangeness of human beings." --BBC obit

In some ways her novels are all very similar-- smart philosophical soap operas with a handful of characters, some of whom are commiting adultery, usually including a mystical dimension, often with a charismatic mystery man, often with imagery of drowning. [more]

"Malcolm Bradbury has assembled a useful list of recurring types in Iris Murdoch's books: the Near-Saint and the Failed Priest, the Strange Enchanter and the Love-Prisoner, the Haunted Child and the Deathbed Contemplative, the Bookish Bureaucrat and the Radiant Woman."

Her style is a fearless plunge into her characters' thinking, with heaps of adjectives to make things vivid. The characters come in every possible variety, and every sort of story variant is explored. Many letters are quoted, with many scenes of pure dialog too.

(I wrote her in 1990 or so about my plan to use quotes from her novels as the basis of a psychology textbook, and she approved entirely. You can see a portion of this, about romantic love, here.)

I recommend "A Word Child" as a startingpoint, but almost anywhere is fine. Popular titles: Flight from the Enchanter, A Severed Head, The Nice and the Good, The Black Prince, The Sea The Sea, Nuns and Soldiers.

BBC obit: "She was a slow writer, and planned every book in considerable detail before making a start. Then she might produce two complete drafts and revise them considerably. At the same time, her output was remarkably steady, nearly a book a year. A friend asked her once: 'How long do you take off between books?' to which she is said to have replied: 'About half an hour'."

AP obit: "I invent the whole thing before I start writing. Even the conversations are in my head. I don't start writing the thing until I've got the whole of it absolutely." Murdoch didn't put up with editing, not even allowing punctuation changes. In a 1994 interview, she said two of the most important things in her life were her parents and her work. "But above all else, the most important thing in my life is my husband," she said. "To have had a happy marriage is a very good thing."

Reuters obit: Author A.N. Wilson said Murdoch was appalled by the financial success of her books and would regularly pay whole royalty cheques to charities. ... She delivered her handwritten manuscripts to publishers in a plastic bag. ...Her handwriting was completely indecipherable... She thought word processors were an evil of the modern world.

"Iris doesn't have a demon," Bayley once said. "Creation is for her a quiet, still, mysterious activity; and as a book is going on she becomes more and more tranquil." He usually did not read her books until they were published.

She once said she did not think she could tell a lie.

In later years, she returned more to her philosophical interests. She would devote the first two hours of her working day to philosophy, though she said she found it fiendishly difficult.

(written during the worst bombing) Mary lives partly in Paris, group of young English characters [pjc170] "extremely bad & ought to be torn up" [pjc230]

'2nd novel' rejected by TS Eliot in autumn 1944 [pjc170] "none of the characters is altogether me whereas in the other they all were" [pjc230]

no-date: characters Stuart ('erect with longing'), Peter, Damien, Benedicta, Hilary, Morgen [pjc171]

1944-45 set in Oxford and London, mentions statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus; characters John, Valery, Pete, 'the Professor', Christie (mystic), Mark (based on Frank Thompson) [pjc171]

Jan 1946 "a lot of silly spoilt nervy pseudo intellectuals without any real joy or real Angst in them" [pjc230]

'Our Lady of the Bosky Gates' abandoned 1949 [pjc380] 'the Guardian' (semi-bogus mystic), statue of Aphrodite (?) that comes to life [pjc296]

"...I like the women in novels by James and Conrad who are so peculiarly flower-like and who are described as 'guileless, profound, confident, and trustful'. That 'profound' is good: fluttering white hands and as deep as the sea..." (p28)

Angus Wilson summed it up as 'wine, women, and Wittgenstein' [pjc385]

dedication to Raymond Queneau [bio] [pix] (IM had tried translating RQ in 1945-- cf Jake: pjc232)

characters: James 'Jake' Donaghue (narrator), Peter 'Finn' O'Finney, Magdalen 'Madge' Casement, Dave Gellman, Anna Quentin, Sadie Quentin, Samuel 'Sacred Sammy' Starfield, Lefty Todd, Hugo Belfounder (wise), Mister Mars

Hugo Belfounder mainly based on Yorick Smythies [passim], a student of Wittgenstein's: 'totally truthful', two loves, tried to become bus conductor, d1980 [pjc381]

possibly based on WW2 refugee Emeric Pressburger [IMDb]

map

title: alludes to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 6.341 [etext] [pjc384]

epigraph: Dryden [etext]

Wallace Collection, Cavalier (p121) [info&pix;]
Victoria Embankment (p155): [pix] [benches now]
Anna's voice (p251): alludes to Josephine Baker in Sartre's 'Nausea' [pjc384]

Rated #95 in Random House's Top 100 of the 20th Century. (This choice reflects the uniformity of her output-- they had to pick one, so they went with the first!)

a movie version was discussed [pjc382] attempted? [pjc532]
US edition cut something from scene with Lefty [pjc417]

Amazon page

Here she achieves full competence.

Mischa Fox based on Elias Canetti [pjc442] (also Julius King in FHD, Charles Arrowby in The Sea The Sea)

Peter Saward based on Franz Steiner [pjc442] (also Tallis Browne in FHD, Willy Kost in Nice and Good)

Amazon page

Short review

perhaps based on IM's c1947 intrusion on the marriage of Donald MacKinnon [pjc257]

IM charged 'The Sandpiper' was plagiarism, MGM paid her off [pjc532]

Amazon page

very slight-- one awkward date

characters: 24yo Yvonne Geary, Sam Goldman, Mrs Geary, Mr O'Brien

Yvonne partly based on Eva Robinson Lee [pjc446]

Mariners' Church (p18): Kingstown (mentioned in The Red and the Green, p5)

"Depicts an Anglican religious community in Oxfordshire; presents a series of events which cohere around the replacement bell to be hung in an abbey tower. The bell with all its symbolic dimensions forms background against which the central characters define their identities and relationships."

based on Malling Abbey where IM made three short retreats between 1946 and 1949, on recommendation of Donald MacKinnon [pjc248]

Bayley says he contributed a paragraph on page ten, the lone time. [EfI]

Later televised.

Amazon page

(also a play, written with J.B. Priestley, and a movie that IM judged 'terrible': pjc533)

"Jungian theories of archetypes; analyses through the theories of Freud male sexuality and desire, and particularly the fear of castration"

One of her most widely taught.

Did Robertson Davies plagiarise Severed Head in his Fifth Business? (long, spoilers)

Poncy academic essay

Amazon page

"He took the doll out of his pocket and set it on Miranda's knee. It was unexpected. Dropping the others she looked at it for a moment, her mouth slightly open. Then she looked back at Felix and there was in her eyes a dark violence which he could not decipher..." p264

Massive romantic gridlock; characters a little less engaging than usual.

Felix is partly based on Bayley's brother Michael, who also contributed aspects to the Count in N&S; [pjc438]

dedication to Margaret Hubbard [Oxford classicist?] [tenured]

Blurb

epigraph: Rupert Brooke [etext]

characters: 67yo Hugh Peronett, c42yo Randall Peronett (nasty), Ann Peronett, c14yo Miranda Peronett, c57yo Emma Sands (wizard), 30+yo Lindsay Rimmer, 15yo Penn Graham, c57yo Mildred Meecham Finch, c42yo Colonel Felix 'Yoyo' Meecham

Humphrey Finch partly based on Sir Owen O'Malley [pjc438]

Tintoretto (p5): [pix]
late Titian (p5):
secateurs (p15): hand snips [pix]
Redoute (p26): botanical illustrator c1800, specialised in roses [pix]
moss roses (p29): [pic]
MC (p43): Military Cross [info] (won at Anzio: p301)
Aga cooker (p49): efficient Swedish design [info]

'To flaming youth let virtue be as wax' (p74): Hamlet [etext]
Susannah Bathing (p92): [pic] ditto [cf? pic]
Durbar (p124): [def]
Such Is Life (p275): rural Australian stories c1880 [info] [etext]
Aphrodite Anadyomene (p307): 'rising from the foam' [cite]
lointaine (p310): remote

time-anchor: nuclear-war anxiety (p263)

Amazon page

A lesser effort, I think.

Max Lejour based on Eduard Fraenkel [pjc120] Tadg based on Griggs' golden labrador 'Crumpet' [pjc438]

Amazon page

A lesser effort, I think. Adapted for the West End stage in the 1960's.

Amazon page

An unusual historical novel of Ireland in 1916. Also a lesser effort, I think.

dedication to Philippa Foot (Oxford philosopher, b1920: bibliog)

characters: 21yo 2nd Lt. Andrew Chase-White, Frances Bellman, Christopher Bellman, Hilda Drumm Chase-White, Barnabas 'Barney' Drumm, Kathleen Kinnard Dumay Drumm, 22yo Pat Dumay, 14yo Cathal Dumay, Millicent 'Millie' Dumay Kinnard

Donald MacKinnon broke off friendship believing Barney to be based on him [pjc440] (in 1992 he publicly denounced her as 'evil'; JRR in Philosopher's Pupil may also have aspects of DM)

Barney's marriage resembles Alan Cameron with Elizabeth Bowen [pjc441]

dates: 16-24Apr 1916 [cal] [pix]

"We're practically incestuous" (p12):

                    Kinnard   (also related to Drumms)
                /     |     \
*Millie = Arthur  Kathleen*  Heather = C Bellman
                                     |
                                  Frances


                 JR Dumay = Janet S-D = Arnold Chase-White
                        /  \          |
Barney = *Kathleen = Brian  Millie*  Henry = Hilda Drumm
Drumm            /  \                      |
               Pat Cathal                Andrew

South African war (p18): Boer War, 1899-1902
trousers... cigars... revolver (p18): probably based on 48yo Constance Markiewicz (Markievicz) [bio] [bio&pic;] [uniform]
Yeomen of the Guard (p27): Gilbert and Sullivan [info]
Panhard (p28): French [pic] [info]
Vauxhall Prince Henry (p29): [pic]
Casement (p39):
'Did you see' quote (p41): from Yeats "Cathleen ni Houlihan"
chancer (p43): untrustworthy opportunist [def]
Dido (p44):
George Moore (p47):
Tio Pepe (p75): an expensive sherry [info]
Liberty Hall (p119): [pic]

Andrew/Pat based on Michael Foot and Frank Thompson? [pjc439]

Amazon page

dedicated to Eduard Fraenkel

Amazon page

Popular.

"A suicide in a government office that may turn out to be a murder... An attractive government official, who likes to think well of himself, precariously juggling an old love and a new..."

Short quote

Willy Kost based on Franz Steiner [pjc442] (also Peter Saward in Flight from Enchanter, Tallis Browne in FHD)

Amazon page

Danby based on Stephen Gardiner? [pjc439]
four people feared that old man was based on them (Priestly, Elizabeth Bowen, Lord David Cecil, 'BMB') [pjc439]

Amazon page

Paul Newman hired Peter Ustinov to write a screenplay, but IM didn't like it [pjc533]

Julius King based on Elias Canetti [pjc442] (also Mischa Fox in Flight from Enchanter, Charles Arrowby in The Sea The Sea)

Tallis Browne based on Franz Steiner [pjc442] (also Peter Saward in Flight from Enchanter, Willy Kost in Nice and Good)

Julius/Tallis based on Canetti/Bayley [pjc438]

Course questions

Amazon page

Short review

Amazon page

One of her very best, about mad love. Won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The Black Prince, 1989 (play) I happened to see this in London, and found it the most multi-dimensional psychology I'd ever seen on stage, but maybe this was because I already knew the novel very well.

"The ambiguously romantic Black Prince of the title, Bradley Pearson, is an aged bachelor, whose range of somewhat histrionic emotions involves the serene Rachel Baffin, her confused daughter Julian, Rachel's novelist husband Arnold, Bradley's rival in so many ways, Bradley's dysfunctional sister Priscilla, and Bradley's prying ex-wife Christian..."

Amazon page

Not as bizarre as it sounds.

Amazon page

My favorite by a mile, a great place to start, very darkly funny, also about mad love.

Amazon page

Amazon page

"Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill..." --Charles Arrowby, p27

Very popular.

"The novel concerns a retired theater director who moves to the seashore in order to contemplate his life. He recalls how an adolescent love which he greatly idealized prohibited him from committing himself completely to any of the important women in his life. Coincidentally, he meets the woman again and tries to resume his love affair but she won't have him..."

dedication to Rosemary Cramp (archeology professor at U of Durham: [info] pic)

characters: Charles Arrowby (60+ narrator), Mary Hartley Smith Fitch (60+), Lizzie Scherer (45+), Rosina Vamburgh (Jones), Gilbert Opian

Charles based on Elias Canetti [pjc442] (also Mischa Fox in Flight from Enchanter, Julius King in FHD)

recollection in tranquillity (p1): Wordsworth's definition of poetry [etext]
White of Selborne (p2): Gilbert White, first English ecologist 1763 [etext]
double-fronted (p13): [pix]
Honor Klein (p73): from IM's Severed Head, played on screen by Clair Bloom
pig-baby (p80): [pix] [large]

water: major motif
occult: cryptozoon

Amazon page

"She examined her face in the mirror of the compact and as she did so a remarkable change came over her expression. The frown vanished and was succeeded by a look of angelic calm." p207 (of Mrs Mount)

I like this one a lot.

dedication to Natasha and Stephen Spender [info]

characters: Piotr/Peter Wojciech 'The Count' Szczepanski ('soldier'), Gertrude McCluskie Openshaw ('nun'?), Anne Cavidge (nun, saintly), Tim Reede ('soldier'?), Daisy Barrett, Perkins, Jesus

The Count is partly based on Bayley's brother Michael, who also contributed aspects to Felix in Unofficial Rose [pjc438]

water: major motif (Cumbria cottage, French stream)
occult: magic site, religious vision

Anne's vision is based on IM's 1947 dream [pjc251]

Ereignis (p3) = Heidegger's technical term for 'event' [more]
Poscimur (p4) = 'we are asked to sing' (Latin)
'En fin' quote (p5) = 'it's all the same whether we get drunk by ourselves or lead the people' from Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [cite]
Curzon Line (p10) [info]
LSE (p12) = London School of Economics
'finis poloniae' (p14) = dying words of Thaddeus Kosciusko ('save Poland's borders'?)
Carlyle on Frederick (p20) [etext]
Sicilian Expedition (p38) 413BC [info]
Abject Prayer (p68) [not found]
Roedean (p74) boarding school [website]
dotty smile of Goya peasant (p78) [pic?]
Pappageno (p87) from Mozart's Magic Flute [story]
les femmes superieures (p95) [not found]
Cumbria (p98) [pic]
The Heart of Midlothian (p104) by Walter Scott [etext]
Giulio Romano (p129) mentioned in 'Winter's Tale' [info] [pix] [etext
Judenrein (p254) = 'free of Jews' in German
time-anchor (p461) Pope John Paul II (16Oct 1978)
Shylock's ring (p477) [etext]

Amazon page

lots of philosophical argument

"There's two snails on a leaf, one on each side. Then one comes round the leaf and says to the other one, 'It's only me.'" --Adam McCaffrey, p179

dedication: to Arnaldo Momigliano [pic] [NYRB] [essay] ditto

characters: George McCaffrey (nasty), Stella Henriques McCaffrey, Brian McCaffrey, Gabriel Bowcock McCaffrey, Adam McCaffrey (fey), Tom McCaffrey (saintly), Alexandra Stillowen McCaffrey, Ruby Doyle, Diamond Davis Sedley (Diane Sedleigh), Pearl Scotney, Hattie Meynell, John Robert Rozanov (genius), Father Bernard Jacoby (heretic), Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor, Zed

Zed based on Diana Avebury's 'Zelda' [pjc438]
Rozanov has aspects of Donald MacKinnon (see Red and Green) [pjc440] (in 1992 he publicly denounced her as 'evil')

water: major motif

Enniston is based on Bath [history] [pix] [18thC] [map] [map] The local river is the Avon. [canal] ditto But the fictional map is different.

sonnet 153 (p18)

'Natando Virtus' (p20) = through swimming comes virtue
'guarda e passa' (p227) = 'look and pass on' [Dante]

The local painter Ned Larkin is said to be a student of Paul Nash (p19) [example] [more]

time-anchor: earthquake? (1981 Santa Barbara?)

Amazon page

NYT

goofiest plot-- occult events, coincidences, improbabilities

"Now listen to me. You are undergoing by accident and by your own fault a spiritual journey which many would consciously purchase at a great price, but cannot buy..." --Thomas McCaskerville, p71

dedication to Brigid Brophy [papers] [NYRB]

characters: Edward Baltram (20), Sarah Plowmain, Harry Cuno, Stuart Cuno (24, saintly), Margaret 'Midge' Warriston McCaskerville, Thomas McCaskerville (wise), Meredith McCaskerville, May Barnes Baltram, Ilona Baltram, Bettina Baltram (fey), Jesse Aylwyn Baltram (genius), Brenda 'Brownie' Wilsden, Mrs DM Quaid, the tree men

occult: seance, dancing at magic site, visions
water: river

tout passe, toute casse, tout lasse = everything passes, everything breaks, everything grows boring (p23)
sors = divination by lots (or by a random reading) (p48) [def]
Marsyas (p78) [myth] [detail] [Titian]
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo (p150) = If I can't move Heaven, I'll raise Hell (from Virgil's Aeneid, used an an epigraph by Freud)
Proust quote (p278) = If it rained-- though rain didn't bother Albertine, whom one sometimes saw in her raincoat, riding by on her bicycle in a downpour-- we'd spend the day in the casino, where in those days it seemed impossible not to go.
Leskov, Nikolai (p383) [bio]

Amazon page

"To send a message to someone at a distance, each of you has a snail, and you tell your snail what you want to say, and the person with the other snail gets the message. You have to put a spell on the snails of course." --Lily Boyne, p538

sprawling, but eventually ties everything up credibly
caveat: includes emotional material on abortion

dedication to Diana Avebury [Zed-connection]

characters: David Crimond (nasty genius), Gerard Hernshaw, Duncan Cambus, Jean Kowitz Cambus, Rose Curtland, Tamar Marjorie Hernshaw, Violet Hernshaw, Jenkin Riderhood (saintly), Gulliver Ashe, Lily Boyne Farling (fey), Patricia Hernshaw Fairfax, Gideon Fairfax, Father Angus McAlister (heretic), Professor Levquist (wise), Grey the parrot

Levquist based on Eduard Fraenkel [pjc120]

occult: snails

map

Plotinus (p16)
'Les esprits' quote (p16)

"Years ago, a group of friends bonded together to finance a political and philosophical book to be written by one of them. Now, amidst a midsummer ball at Oxford, a crisis occurs, and the vindictive ghosts of the past invade the present. "

Amazon page

essay

Amazon page

"Moy thinks everything is alive. I heard her say sorry to a piece of lemon peel." --Sefton Anderson, p229

dedication: for Ed Victor (literary agent for IM, Douglas Adams, etc: info)

characters: Lucas Graffe (nasty), Clement 'Harlequin' Graffe, Bellamy James (saintly), Louise Anderson, Alethea 'Aleph' Anderson, Sophia 'Sefton' Anderson, Moira 'Moy' Anderson (fey), Harvey Blacket, Joan 'Circe' Blacket, Father Damien Butler, Tessa Millen, Peter Mir, Anax the collie

Anax based on Conradi's 'Cloudy' [pjc438, 515 pic]

occult: telekinesis, 'resurrection', 'lightningbolt'
water: Thames swan, seaside

map

Gawain and the Green Knight (p431): [etexts]
Anax: Homeric Greek for 'king' [etym]
'une vie de baton de chaise' (p3): a life of stick of chair???
Polish Rider (p9): [pic]
black-footed ferret (p9): [pic&info;]
Fisher's History of Europe (p15): 1935 3vol [info]
Cox's Orange Pippins: [pix] [history]
Glastonbury Romance (p14): by John Cowper Powys [info]
Milton quote (p15): from Comus [etext]
passeggiata (p21): promenade [passim]
Roman bridge: [cf?]
Copenhagen kouros (p32): [pic]
'Luxe, calme, et volupte' (p37): 'comfort, calm, and bliss' from Baudelaire [bi-ling etext]
Christ in Limbo (p43): [Durer] [Angelico]
moujik (p51): Russian peasant [def]
'Ca revient' quote (p55) = 'it's all the same whether we get drunk by ourselves or lead the people' from Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [cite] (also used in Nuns and Soldiers)
'si ca' quote (p56): 'if you don't mind I'm going to watch my bottoms'?

Meister Eckhart (p95):
Claudel... blottir (p96):
Botticelli's Last Judgment (p96):
Galatians 3:20 (p97):
Lake Geneva... Chateau de Chillon (p100):
ewige Wiederkehr (p111):
Thucydides: [etext]
[Anax's odyssey] (p181): [area map]
'Numeros memini si verba tenerem' (p214): Virgil "I remember the rhythm, if only I could keep hold of the words." [essay]
Siena cathedral (p262):
'Non aspettar' quote (p266): Purgatorio
Arjuna (p306):
I Promessi Sposi (p309):
Samuel Palmer's self-portrait (p342):

Review, Amazon page, B&N; page

When I read this my first reaction was, "Whew, she's still got it!" (Bayley in EfI explains that she barely managed to finish it, and that attentive readers noticed gaps.)

"On the eve of their wedding, Edward Lannion and Marian Berran are led away onto dark and strange paths, while their friends and lovers are forced to make new and surprising choices. Watching over all of them is Jackson, a mysterious and charismatic manservant who, in guiding all the young lovers into the light, has to make his own agonizing decisions."

A review, and another, and another, and another, and my own Amazon page, B&N; page

Philosophical works, etc

Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953)

Amazon page

The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts (1971?)

Amazon page

The Three Arrows (1972)

Play produced in Cambridge with Ian McKellen, set in medieval Japan.

Amazon page

The Servants And The Snow (1973 play)

Amazon page

The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished The Artist (1977)

Amazon page

A Year Of Birds (1978 poems)

Amazon page

Art And Eros (1980 play)

Reynolds Stone (1981)

Amazon page

Acastos (1986) Platonic dialogs on religion, etc.

Short rave

Amazon page

Above The Gods (1987)

The One Alone (1987 radio play)

Blurb

The Existentialist Political Myth (1989)

Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals (1992 or 3?)

"...draws on the entire history of philosophy--and particularly on Plato and Kant--to formulate her own model of morality and demonstrate how thoroughly it is bound up with our daily lives."

Short quote

Amazon page, B&N; page

Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

"Murdoch's changing ideas about the search for meaning in literature and life lead us down a richly rewarding path. Along the way she discusses T. S. Eliot, Dante Alighieri, Matthew Arnold, and many other major literary figures."

Review, review. Amazon page

Described by Murdoch in its early stage as "being in a very, very bad quiet place, a dark place".

Repeatedly asked, "When are we leaving?" [EfI]

The Iris Murdoch sisters

Eulogy

News report, and another.

1999 book: "Elegy for Iris" by John Bayley. Amazon blurbs Washington Post, NY Review of Books [4 pg], Epinions page, review

Salon: as 'geezer porn'

First chapter, other excerpts

This Is London (1999 August 1):

Prof Bayley, 74, who was married to Dame Iris for more than 42 years, told the Sunday Telegraph how he had wished not to prolong his wife's suffering. He said: "Of course you can put someone on a drip, but that just seemed inhumane to me. The idea of keeping sufferers alive as long as possible. I never wanted that because I knew she wouldn't. For the first few days after her death, I found myself chatting to her about, oh, all sorts of things ... and one day I realised she was gone. That was when the awful period came to me. What does one call it? Grieving? Bereavement? I hate the word but that's what it was."

Review: Iris and the Friends: UK Times, ditto, UK Telegraph, Boston Globe, Amazon page, WashPost

Ads for limited edition odds'n'ends including her poems

Long review of poems

Ad for a video interview betwen Iris and the great anti-guru J. Krishnamurti

Quotes and more quotes

First editions

Interview with her agent (no Iris content)

Iris Murdoch's Fables of Unselfing [blurb] Amazon page

Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction publisher's page Amazon page

Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness Amazon page

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