Scope and Contents

Auction catalogue. The stapled pages list prices realized. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Artist dust jacket was designed by Tom Phillips. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The jacket illustration is by Tom Phillips who has painted the portrait of Iris Murdoch.New York Times Book review of 'Living on Paper: Letters From Iris Murdoch, 1934-1995': At 17, Iris Murdoch was asked what she intended to do with her life. She gave a one-word answer: "Write." Sixty years on, what may have been Dame Iris Murdoch's last coherent words as she was sucked into the darkness of Alzheimer's disease were: "I wrote."She usually did it the hard way: longhand, preferably with a Montblanc fountain pen. Her writing encompassed 26 published novels as well as ­philosophical treatises, essays and, most time-consumingly, an ocean of letters. She ­dutifully replied to every one she received, unless they were "mad or spiteful." Writing letters, Avril Horner and Anne Rowe note in their introduction to "Living on Paper," their selection of Murdoch's correspondence, routinely took up four hours of her afternoon.They were not drudging hours. For Murdoch, there was a sheer...