title: Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 19341995
author:  Iris Murdoch 
description: "An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters." (<i>Kirkus</i>)<br /><br />"[E]ngrossing and frequently moving." (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>)<br /><br />"Perhaps the best thing about<i>Living on Paper</i>is the portrait of Murdoch that emerges."<b>---Becca Rothfeld, <i>The Nation</i></b><br /><br />"An intimate view of the prolific British novelist and philosopher. . . . With their deep knowledge of Murdoch's life and work, the editors have produced an authoritative, readable, and informative volume that contextualizes the writer's vibrant, intense, and sometimes slyly witty correspondence. . . . An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters." (<i>Kirkus</i>)<br /><br />"[A]n unprecedented exposure of the heart and mind of a major novelist and thinker (the author of 26 novels and three major works of philosophy) and a woman who lived a life of unusual intellectual and personal freedom."<b>---Ann Chisholm, <i>Prospect</i></b><br /><br />"[A] compulsively readable volume."<b>---Daniel Johnson, <i>Standpoint</i></b><br /><br />"[A] treasure trove. The letters are fervent, philosophical, frenetic and witty; they suggest sources, from her own life, for the varied portraits of obsessive desire in her novels."<b>---Rivka Isaacson, <i>Independent</i></b><br /><br />"'I am an indefatigable letter writer', Iris Murdoch wrote to a friend in 1968. 'I am pretty good at conversation by letter'. A new, insightful book, <i>Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995</i> testifies that she was right on both counts."<b>---Malcolm Forbes, <i>The National</i></b><br /><br />"Anyone who misses the regular appearance of new Murdoch novels will find plenty to enjoy and admire in these letters. They pitch us back into her cerebral yet vaguely surreal and magical intellectual world."<b>---Dwight Garner, <i>New York Times</i></b><br /><br />"Intimate, learned, generous, stern and flirtatious. . . . [<i>Living on Paper</i>] begins when [Iris Murdoch] is 15 . . . and ends, heart-wrenchingly, with her struggling through Alzheimer's to write a valued friend. . . . In between is an epic, epistolary 20th-century adventure."<b>---Nicholas Khler, <i>Maclean's</i></b>
zlib_text: ![image](../images/cover.jpg)
  
  
  LIVING ON PAPER
  
  
  LIVING ON PAPER
  
  
  LETTERS FROM IRIS MURDOCH 1934–1995
  
  
  ![Image](../images/line.jpg)
  
  
  IRIS MURDOCH
  
  
  Edited by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe
  
  
  Princeton University Press
  
  
  PRINCETON AND OXFORD
  
  
  Published in North America in 2016 by
  
  
  Princeton University Press,
  
  
  41 William Street, Princeton, NJ 08540
  
  
  [press.princeton.edu](http://press.princeton.edu)
  
  
  First published in 2015 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage.
  
  
  Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies.
  
  
  Letters: © Kingston University 2015
  
  
  Introduction, all footnotes and endmatter © Avril Horner and Anne Rowe, 2015
  
  
  The moral right of Iris Murdoch to be identified as the author of this work,
  and Avril Horner and Anne Rowe as its editors, has been asserted.
  
  
  Ed Victor Ltd are the agents for the Iris Murdoch Estate and handle
  publication rights to all other works. They can be contacted at
  [info@edvictor.com](mailto:info@edvictor.com).
  
  
  United Agents ar