Bibliofemme News
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17/04/2004
Iris Murdoch library bought by UK University
Iris Murdoch's working library was saved for Britain last night by the fundraising zeal of one of the newer universities, and the loyalty of a rare book dealer who refused fatter offers from the US.
Kingston University in Surrey said it had bought the novelist's library for a sum understood to be £120,000, though it was on the market for £150,000. The university managed to raise half of this in only a few months.
The collection of more than 1,000 books - many of them with her own remarks in the margins - surrounded and influenced her from 1952, when she began writing the first of her 26 novels, until a few years before she died of Alzheimer's disease in 1999.
The archive contains a number of unique literary and philosophical treasures, including a notebook in which she wrote comments on a lecture given by the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in Brussels in 1945. Seven years later she published a study of Sartre.
The rest of the purchase price was raised in a £40,000 appeal by the Iris Murdoch Society and a £20,000 grant from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
Review: The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
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