The Bell (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
Play sample
  • Published: 15 February 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099470489
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $35.00

The Bell (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Sep 2019
Paperback
15 Feb 2004
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Audiobook
7 Jul 2011
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil and the terrible accidents of human frailty.

Discover Murdoch’s wonderful writing in this compelling story of a young woman and an unusual religious lay community.

A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home to an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean... Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil and the terrible accidents of human frailty.
  • Published: 15 February 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099470489
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne’s College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including 'The Sovereignty of Good' (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).

portrait photo of Iris Murdoch

Also by Iris Murdoch

The Sea, The Sea & A Severed Head
Living on Paper
The Black Prince
An Accidental Man
A Word Child
The Time Of The Angels
Henry And Cato
See all

Praise for The Bell (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)

A tragi-comic masterpiece... A magnificent novel

Susan Hill, The Lady

Her novels evoked beautifully the atmosphere of the country gardens (The Bell, 1958) or the mysterious London streets (The Time of the Angels, 1968) in which they were set, with their characters engaged in intriguing love relationships, from the totally innocent to the wholly weird.

The Times

Iris Murdoch really knows how to write, can tell a story, delineate a character, catch an atmosphere with deadly accuracy

John Betjeman

Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable-behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

Sunday Times

A distinguished novelist of a rare kind

Kingsley Amis