Biography
Dame Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 to Anglo-lrish parents. She went to school in London and Bristol, before studying at Somerville College, Oxford, where she and later at Cambridge, as a student in Philosophy. On leaving University in 1942, she worked in for the British Government in the Treasury Department, and with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. After the war she went to Belgium and Austria, where she worked in a Displaced Persons Camp. In 1948 she was made a Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she lectured in Philosophy. In 1956 she married the critic and Oxford Professor of English, John Bayley. She was awarded a CBE in 1976 and a DBE in 1967. Her novels have been translated into 26 languages.
Widely regarded by many critics as one of the most important post-war novelists, her fiction include Under the Net (1953), The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), Bruno's Dream (1969), The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), winner of the Whitbread Novel Award, The Sea, The Sea (1978), winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction, The Good Apprentice (1985) and The Green Knight (1993). Her books on philosophy include The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). Her plays include 'The Servants and the Snow', adapted into a libretto for an opera by William Matthias in 1980, 'Art and Eros' and 'The Black Prince', both been produced at the National Theatre in London. Her portrait by Tom Phillips was placed in the National Portrait Gallery in 1987.
Dame Iris Murdoch died in 1999.
