The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and the painter Harry Weinberger engaged in over twenty years of close friendship and intellectual discourse, centred on sustained discussion of the practice, teaching and morality of art. This book presents a reappraisal of Murdoch’s novels – chiefly, three mature novels,The Sea, The Sea(1978), Nuns and Soldiers(1980) andThe Good Apprentice(1985), and two enigmatic late novels,The Green Knight(1993) andJackson’s Dilemma(1995) – which are perceived through the prism of her discourse with Weinberger. It draws on a run of almost 400 letters from...

This volume is the third volume in Palgrave' Macmillan's new Iris Murdoch Today scholarly series.Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imaginationis the first major collection of literary essays since her centenary in 2019. It brings together leading Murdoch scholars from across the world who expand the boundaries of recent criticism offering work not only on the novels, but on her unpublished poetry and archival materials. This collection discusses her interest in, and use of, Japanese literature; her relationship with, and reader-response to her, in Australia; Murdoch in the post #metoo era; her...