The Sea, the Sea

by Murdoch, Iris; Kinzie, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780141186160
• ISBN10: 014118616X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

Author Biography

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919, grew up in London, and received her university education at Oxford and later at Cambridge. In 1948 she became a Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford, where for many years she taught philosophy. In 1987 she was appointed Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire. She died on February 8, 1999. Murdoch wrote twenty-six novels, including Under the Net, her writing debut of 1954, and the Booker Prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978). She received a number of other literary awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread Prize for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of philosophy include Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1980), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1993), and Existentialists and Mystics (1998). She also wrote several plays and a volume of poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Mary Kinzie
The Sea, the Sea
Prehistory	1	(87)
History
One	88	(20)
Two	108	(43)
Three	151	(85)
Four	236	(103)
Five	339	(46)
Six	385	(87)
Postscript: Life Goes On	472