Imprint: Vintage
Published: 03/11/2016
ISBN: 9780099570158
Length: 688 Pages
Dimensions: 235mm x 40mm x 153mm
Weight: 912g
RRP: £14.99
EDITED BY AVRIL HORNER AND ANNE ROWE
‘Destroy this and all letters. And keep your mouth shut’
This collection of Iris Murdoch’s most interesting and revealing letters gives us a living portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and thinkers. The letters show a great mind at work – we see the young Murdoch grappling with philosophical questions, as well as feeling her anguish when a novel obstinately refuses to come together.
They uncover Murdoch’s famed personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its intriguing complexity, and her penchant for living beyond the bounds of social acceptability. We also begin to see the 'real life material' that fed into her fiction, despite her claims that her fiction never drew on reality. Above all we see the accumulation of life – intimate, irreverent, fiercely engaged with the world – in this extraordinary collection of letters.
Imprint: Vintage
Published: 03/11/2016
ISBN: 9780099570158
Length: 688 Pages
Dimensions: 235mm x 40mm x 153mm
Weight: 912g
RRP: £14.99
Astonishing
Deeply impressive
Reading these letters is like living Murdoch's whole creatively, sexually and intellectually voracious life alongside her, and at breakneck speed. Thrilling
The letters themselves have been selected with conviction and care...the overwhelming sense of this volume is one of richness
Her mind, here as in everything she wrote, is formidable
Astonishing epistolary abundance from a woman who meant it when she told a friend that she could "live in letters"... Few books leave the reader with as dizzying sense of the need to question absolutely everything
We find a passionate engagement with the world of ideas, but most of all with friends, lovers, and pupils. These letters reveal Murdoch's extraordinary talent for affection, exuberant sense of fun, razor-sharp intelligence, and acute awareness of the transcendent
Exemplary... The reader grows up and grows old with Murdoch
This collection of letters provides a fascinating insight into the life of a complex and important novelist. It is a wonderful book
Murdoch was not writing for posterity; she was writing for her friends, or rather as a way of maintaining her friendships, whether intellectual, passionate or both...the letters reinforce Murdoch's qualities as a person