"This is a Borzoi Book"--Title Page Verso.

IRIS MURDOCH (1919-1999) was born in Dublin and brought up in London. She studied philosophy at Cambridge and was a philosophy Fellow at St Anne's College for twenty years. She published her first novel in 1954 and was instantly recognized as a major talent. She went on to publish more than twenty-six novels, as well as works of philosophy, plays, and poetry.

SARAH CHURCHWELL is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe and Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby. She writes regularly for New Statesman, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications.