Her prolific, distinctive prose eventually made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and she was one of Britain's most revered novelists in the second half of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote 26 novels in a career that began with the publication of Under the Net in 1954. She won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award, for The Sea, The Sea in 1978. Not all of her books met with critical success, and she was not exactly an editor's best friend: Murdoch was notorious for resisting any changes to her manuscripts, including punctuation. Her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, was published in 1995.
Passage: Iris Murdoch, 79
Her prolific, distinctive prose eventually made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and she was one of Britain's most revered novelists in the second half of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote 26 novels in a career that began with the publication of Under the Net in 1954. She won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award, for The Sea, The Sea in 1978. Not all of her books met with critical success, and she was not exactly an editor's best friend: Murdoch was notorious for resisting any changes to her manuscripts, including punctuation. Her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, was published in 1995.
