Iris Murdoch

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Dame Iris Murdoch DBE
Born	Jean Iris Murdoch (1919-07-15)15 July 1919 Dublin, Ireland
Died	8 February 1999(1999-02-08) (aged 79) Oxford, England
Nationality	Irish, British
Education	Somerville College, Oxford Newnham College, Cambridge
Notable work	Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953); Under the Net (1954); The Sovereignty of Good (1970); The Sea, the Sea (1978)
Spouse	John Bayley ​ (m. 1956)​
Awards	Booker Prize
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Virtue ethics Modern Platonism
Notable ideas	Sovereignty of the good Idea of perfection

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE (/ˈmɜːrdɒk/ MUR-dok; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".^[1]

Her other books include The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), An Unofficial Rose (1962), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993).

As a philosopher, Murdoch's best known work is The Sovereignty of Good (1970). She was married for 43 years, until her death, to the literary critic and author John Bayley.