Best known as the author of twenty-six novels, Iris Murdoch has also made significant contributions to the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Collected here for the first time in one volume are her most influential literary and philosophical essays. Tracing Murdoch's journey to a modern Platonism, this volume includes incisive evaluations of the thought and writings of T. S. Eliot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvior, and Elias Canetti, as well as key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, on the concept of love, and the role great literature can...

Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of Good and Bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found here.

A complex Shakespearean comedy of intertwined relationships, as nine closely linked characters search for love.
After his wife's death, Hugh contemplates returning to his former mistress. His son, Randall, longs to abandon his shapeless marriage for a perfect partner. Randall's young daughter, Miranda, is adored by her Australian cousin Penn, but has attachments elsewhere. Her mother Ann has her own private dream, while taking upon herself the strains and pains of all the others. Impelled by affection, lust and illusion, these characters search for love within a tightly woven web.

A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disasterous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercies discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean...Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil...

A that study analyses and evaluates the different strands of Sartre's rich and complex work. Combining the objectivity of the scholar with an interest in contemporary problems, this title discusses the tradition of philosophical, political and aesthetic thought that gives historical authenticity to Satre's achievement.

In the healing waters of Ennistone the townspeople seek health and regeneration, righteousness and ritual cleansing. To this town of subterranean inspiration the Philosopher returns. And there he exerts an almost magical influence, especially over George McCaffrey, his old pupil.

A group of poeple have elected Mischa Fox to be their God. While Mischa is charming his devotees, his alter ego, Calvin Blick, is inspiring fear, and Rosa Keepe is swept into the battle between sturdy common sense and dangerous enchantment.

When Charles Arrowby, a 60+ demi-god of the theatre, retires from his glittering London world in order to become a hermit, it is to the sea that he turns. He hopes at least to escape from the women. He unexpectedly meets one whom he loved long ago.

Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the old, awful problems together with some new ones.

"Iris Murdoch was one of the best and most influential writers of the twentieth century." --"Guardian"
Iris Murdoch's richly peopled novel revolves round a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their household in Dorset. The novel deals with love in its two aspects, the self-gratifying and the impersonal -- the nice and the good -- as they are embodied in a fascinating array of paired characters.
"The Nice and the Good" leads through stress and terror to a joyous and compassionate 'Midsummer Nights Dream' conclusion, in which the couples all...