born July 15, 1919, Dublin, Ire.
died Feb. 8, 1999, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.
British novelist and philosopher.
A graduate of the University of Oxford, she worked as a university lecturer while pursuing her writing career. Her first published work was a study of Jean-Paul Sartre (1953). Her novels, including The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), The Black Prince (1973), The Sea, the Sea (1978), and The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), typically have convoluted plots featuring philosophical and comic elements. Her nonfiction philosophical works include The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). Her decline under Alzheimer disease was chronicled by her husband, the critic John Bayley, in Elegy for Iris (1999).