My collection

In an effort to find some room on my fiction bookshelves I took out all my Iris Murdoch books and they are now on a shelf by themselves. This is a collection spanning many, many years, as I have been reading Iris Murdoch since I was a teenager. I had not realised that I have now all but one of her novels. They are in publication order here but this is not how I first read them.

 The middle section, the Virago editions, were ones which I started reading in the 1970s and 80s at a time when there was no money for buying books and I remember getting them from the Library in Saltaire, which we visited regularly as a family. I think I must at a later date have decided to get my own copies of these, when they appeared in paperback and I could afford to buy them.

The first few books are the early ones, which were before my time and which I bought eventually as paperbacks - I am currently replacing these much-read- falling-apart books with lovely new editions. Then the hardback editions are first editions which I must have got as presents each year, as they were published. The last ones are ones I must have bought at some stage when I realised there were some I hadn’t read. 

So there it is - My Iris Murdoch Collection. All read, most re-read several times.

Earlier this year I listened to some excellent lectures focused on several of the books. And I have just subscribed to another set of lectures  in the New Year focusing on some more of them. I am enjoying re-reading them after quite a long gap.