A review of her husband'd book, _Elegy for Iris_, about caring for her as Alzheimer's settled over her. http://search.nytimes.com/books/search/bin/fastweb?getdoc+book-rev+book-r+24166+0+wAAA+%22John%7EBayley%22

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) in full Dame Jean Iris Murdoch, married name Mrs. J.O. Bailey British writer and university lecturer, a prolific and highly professional novelist. Murdoch has dealt in her works everyday ethical or moral issues, the quesation of good and bad, and explored the the function of myth in the process of making sense of one's life. Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin. Her father was a civil servant who served as a cavalry officer in the World War I. The family moved to London in her childhood and she grew up in the western suburbs of Hammersmith and Chiswich. Between the years Murdoch studied classics, ancient history and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. From 1938 to 1942 she worked the at the Treasury as an assistant principal, and then for the United Nations relief organization UNNRA (1944-46). After a year without employment in London, Murdoch took up a postgraduate studentship in philosophy under Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1948 she was elected a fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford, working as a tutor until 1963. Since then Murdoch has lived as a writer. Between the years 1963 and 1967 she also lectured at the Royal College of Art. Murdoch's first published work was a critical study SARTRE, ROMANTIC RATIONALIST, which appeared in 1953. She had met Sartre in the 1940s, becoming interested in existentialism. In 1956 Murdoch married John Baley, long a professor of English at Oxford, who has also published fiction. They lived many years at Steeple Ashton, and moved then in the academic suburb of North Oxford. In 1954 Murdoch made her debut as novelist with UNDER THE NET, which had as its protagonist the Sartrean hero Jack Donague, and forms a critique of his concern with essences rather than materiality. Together with A SEVERED HEAD (1961), which exploits Jungian theories of archetypes, it has been criticized for the weighting of its theoretical template over a concern with characterization. A Severed Head analyses through the theories of Freud male sexuality and desire, and particularly the fear of castration. THE BELL (1958) is among Murdoch's most successful novels, depicting an Anglican religious community in Oxfordshire. The novel presents a series of events which cohere around the replacement bell to be hung in an abbey tower. The bell with all its symbolic dimensions forms background against which the central characters define their identities and relationships. The works was later televised. Murdoch has published over twenty novels. In her early works, such as THE SANDCASTLE (1957) the style is polished, and the books are generally short, but her later works are large, over 500 pages in lenght. Her major work is considered THE SEA, THE SEA, which won the Booker Prize in 1978. Among her other publications are plays and philosophical and critical studies, including METAPHYSICS AS A GUIDE TO MORALS (1992). She was made a dame in 1987.