Letters and poems from Iris Murdoch to William Robson

Iris Murdoch wrote the 9 undated autograph letters to Wallace Robson, together with 11 poems, between March 1952 and March 1954. Murdoch met Robson in 1950 when he was Fellow in English at Lincoln College Oxford. The sequence is important because it suggests a more protracted relationship than is described in Murdoch’s official biography by Peter Conradi. He suggests that Murdoch finally ended the relationship late in April 1952, though the affair reignited after she was bereaved later that year and then finally lapsed. He also notes that Robson was deeply pained, but while his final word on the relationship is that reconciliation was at first refused by Murdoch and took place only after both parties married, the fact that two poems in this collection are respectively dated 9 and 12 March 1954, may suggest that Conradi’s version of events will now need to be reconsidered.