We know it’s not good behaviour to complain about reviews. As academics who have published books and articles, we’ve learned to celebrate the good ones and take the bad ones in our stride. And we expected the collection we edited, Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934-1995 to divide readers. Neither Murdoch nor her novels are to everyone’s taste.
However, we have been astonished by the number of reviewers who have been so fiercely judgmental of Murdoch’s personal life; she has been described as “ruthless”, “disloyal”, “self-centred”, “self-indulgent, morally bogus and emotionally incontinent” and even “lazy” (Really? This woman wrote 26 novels and several books of philosophy as well as lecturing and teaching for many years.) It is true that Murdoch lived unconventionally, could be manipulative and that she often had two or more intense relationships running at the same time – but she was also a kind and modest person, full of doubt about her own abilities despite her intellectual brilliance. Her sense of self was amused, rather than inflated, by the title of Dame, which she never used. Her letters show many acts of thoughtfulness and generosity as well as a wicked sense of fun; there is not a hint of malice or pomposity in any of them. As Anne Chisholm comments in Prospect, they are “conversational, intimate, affectionate” rather than written with an eye on posterity.
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