IRIS MURDOCHIRIS MURDOCH

BIOGRAPHYBIOGRAPHY

Iris Murdoch was born in Phibsborough, Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of Irene Alice and Wills John Hughes Murdoch.

Murdoch was educated in progressive independent schools, entering the Froebel Demonstration School in 1925 and attending Badminton School in Bristol as a boarder from 1932 to 1938. In 1938 she went up to Somerville College, Oxford, with the intention of studying English, but switched to Classics.

From 1947 to 1948 Iris Murdoch studied philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. She met Wittgenstein at Cambridge but did not hear him lecture, as he had left his Trinity College professorship before she arrived.In 1948 she became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 she taught one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art.

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In 1956 Murdoch married John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasted more than forty years until Murdoch's death.

Iris Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net, was published in 1954. She had previously published essays on philosophy, and the first monograph about Jean-Paul Sartre published in English. She went on to produce 25 more novels and additional works of philosophy, as well as poetry and drama. In 1976 she was named to the Commander of Order of the British Empire and in 1987 was made a Dame. Commander of Order of the British Empire. She was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Bath (DLitt,1983), University of Cambridge (1993)and Kingston University (1994), among others. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.

Her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, was published in 1995. Iris Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1997 and died in 1999 in Oxford..

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HER WORKSHER WORKS

UNDER THE NET THE BLACK PRINCE