Born July 15, 1919, in Dublin. English writer.

Iris Murdoch was born into an Anglo-Irish family. She studied classical philology at Oxford University (1938–42) and philosophy at Cambridge (1947–48). She is a lecturer in philosophy at Oxford University.

In her early scholarly and literary works, Murdoch was a follower of existentialism, for example, her Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953). Murdoch’s novel Under the Net (1954; Russian translation, 1966) humorously and sympathetically depicts the searchers for truth among the intelligentsia of the London artistic world. The novel A Severed Head (1961; dramatization, 1963) ironically depicts the world of the affluent bourgeoisie and satirizes the fad for psychoanalysis.

While she is capable of portraying life in all its complexity— in such works as The Bell (1958) and Bruno’s Dream (1969)— Murdoch sometimes falls victim to her own plots and forced symbolism, as in The Unicorn (1963). The subject of The Red and the Green (1965; Russian translation, 1968) is the Irish Rebellion of 1916, which provides the framework for the growth and importance of the novel’s main characters. Despite the exactness of her ethical criteria, Murdoch avoids unambiguous evaluations.

In her works on aesthetic philosophy, including “Against Dryness”(1961), Murdoch regards the shortcoming of the 20th-century novel as a penchant for either dry allegory or diffuse documentary presentation and calls for a return to the realistic hero of the 19th century.