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The Iris Murdoch Society

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Author: Maria Peacock

Researching Iris Murdoch in a Time of Pandemic

Researching Iris Murdoch in a Time of Pandemic

26 April 2021By Maria PeacockBlog

Now libraries and archive collections are re-opening, and I am delighted that restrictions on travel have been lifted, so that I can make an appointment at the Iris Murdoch Special Collections at Kingston University, to continue my work on the archive material there.

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A. S. Byatt A Fairly Honourable Defeat Anne Rowe An Unofficial Rose archives A Severed Head Barbara Dorf Barbara Stevens Heusel Research Fund for Early Career Researchers conference D. H. Lawrence displacement dog's tooth Elizabeth Bowen George Eliot Harry Weinberger Henry James Iris Murdoch Special Collections Italian Girl Jane Austen Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals National Portrait Gallery ontological proof Paul Cézanne PhD Rachel Fenner. Alex Colville Reynolds Stone Sylvia Plath The Bell The Fire and the Sun The Flight from the Enchanter The Idea of Perfection The Italian Girl The Red and the Green the Sea The Sea the Sea thesis The Unicorn Thinking and Language Tom Phillips Unicorn uprootedness Vanessa Bell Virginia Woolf Zadie Smith Émile Zola

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Iris MurdochFollow

Official tweets from the Iris Murdoch Archive Project collaboration between @kingstonuni & @chiuni.

Iris Murdoch
IrisMurdochIris Murdoch@IrisMurdoch·
15h

Has @michaelscaines been rummaging in my handbag? You'll have to buy this weeks @TheTLS to find out...

The TLS@TheTLS

NB: Review copies, American plagiarists, The Waste Land at Shandy Hall, Iris Murdoch’s handbag https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/give-and-take/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1652697673

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IrisMurdochIris Murdoch@IrisMurdoch·
16 May

Aside from Murdoch being back in fashion since 2019, and surging this year, the archive project concluding in 2016 with the new IMRC opening (the archive itself is operational and growing), and the beermat book being a substantial work of scholarship, I'd say this was spot on 🙄

The Critic@TheCriticMag

Why has Iris Murdoch fallen out of fashion? — “It must be the uncompromisingly moral nature of Murdoch’s fiction that has alienated modern readers” — Letters to the Editor https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2022/may-letters-to-the-editor/

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Retweet on TwitterIris Murdoch Retweeted
lithubLiterary Hub@lithub·
11 May

"If any woman could realize Sartre’s picture of self-defining 'man,' Iris might have fancied her chances." Rachel Wiseman (@parenthesis_in) and Clare Mac Cumhail on Iris Murdoch's encounter with Jean-Paul Sartre. https://lithub.com/when-iris-murdoch-met-jean-paul-sartre/

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Retweet on TwitterIris Murdoch Retweeted
five_booksFive Books@five_books·
10 May

“Iris Murdoch ought to be seen as the heir to the nineteenth-century realist novels of George Eliot, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, even going back to Austen. Her great favorite, whom she described as the patron saint of the novel, was Shakespeare.”
@miles_leeson https://fivebooks.com/best-books/iris-murdoch-miles-leeson/

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17 hours ago

Hive mind: please can someone tell me where IM wrote “Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.”? ... See MoreSee Less
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2 days ago

Murdoch on the matAlexander Larman (“[HOW TO BECOME A CULT WRITER](thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2022/how-to-become-a-cult-writer/)”, APRIL) makes reference to Kate Winslet’s statement about Iris Murdoch: “I’m a great fan of hers, but I’ve never read any of her books”. Larman then claims “two decades later, this would attract little opprobrium”.Leaving aside what Winslet found to admire in Iris Murdoch other than her written works (her tumultuous love life? Her famously messy house in Oxford?), why a woman who won the Booker prize in 1978 for *The Sea, The Sea* and was made a Dame in 1987 for services to literature should have receded so dramatically in our cultural consciousness deserves greater consideration.One argument is that Murdoch’ wrote for — and about — a world that no longer exists: stuffy male-dominated academia, posh London finishing schools, and gothic Scottish castles. If the plot of a Trollope novel could be exploded by a phone call, then the plot of an Iris Murdoch novel could be exploded by the alcoholic, cheating, somewhat underachieving lead male character being made redundant in a drive for greater departmental diversity.But surely that can’t be the case: the sometimes supernatural, highly artificial world of Murdoch’s fiction never depended on “relatability” for its success.Rather, it must be the uncompromisingly moral nature of Murdoch’s fiction that has alienated modern readers. Murdoch — herself a practicing philosopher — puts moral dilemmas in her work: crises of faith, questions of “goodness”, people beholden to seemingly arbitrary laws. Her characters are not all “good” (murderers, adulterers, and narcissists among them), but they do force her readers to consider human life, and human nature, on a far bigger scale than the type of novels currently in vogue.There is, of course, also the possibility that Larman’s assumption is wrong and that Kate Winslet’s statement might attract opprobrium now. Earlier this year, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman published Metaphysical Animals — a book which made clear Murdoch’s contributions to philosophy. But, then again, the Iris Murdoch Archive Project seems to be dedicating itself to working on a book about Iris Murdoch’s beermats. What a fairly dishonourable defeat.*Clare Alexander*London ... See MoreSee Less

How to become a cult writer | Alexander Larman | The Critic Magazine

thecritic.co.uk

What does it take for an author to become idolised way beyond their literary merit?
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2 days ago

Scott Stephens at the ABC has republished (or re-featured) my article on silence in Iris Murdoch’s fiction. This is part of my forthcoming book Listening to IM. ... See MoreSee Less

Iris Murdoch’s worlds of sounds and silences

www.abc.net.au

When we think of Iris Murdoch’s relationship with art forms, the visual arts come most readily to mind. But music and other sounds are also important for her. Murdoch particularly uses silence as pa...
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5 days ago

Hi, what are the best Iris Murdoch novels to get me started? ... See MoreSee Less
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