Professor John Bayley kindly provided the photograph of Iris Murdoch. Although every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge the copyright-holder, we have been unable to do so. We would be grateful for information which would enable us to rectify the omission
Iris Murdoch had a long and distinguished dual career as a major twentieth-century English novelist and an influential moral philosopher. She was born on 15th July 1919 in Dublin and christened Jean Iris Murdoch. Her father was Wills John Hughes Murdoch who came from sheep-farming stock in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, and her mother was Irene Alice (neé Richardson) from Dublin who trained as a singer until her daughter was born. Murdoch's background is thus Irish, but not “Anglo-Irish”, as, for example,...
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Citation: White, Frances Clare Patricia. "Dame Iris Murdoch". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 November 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3262, accessed 17 March 2026.]
