Literary Herstory ~ The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

When you think of unsentimental authors who happen to be women, the names which come to mind might include European philosophers (Arendt, de Beauvoir, Weil) and US journalists and essayists (Didion, Sontag). But what of these fair isles? Do we have our own literary tradition of tough-mindedness? And who are our novelists of toughness?

I’ve set about exploring toughness-as-style in British and Irish women novelists circa midcentury to the present. When I crowdsourced recommendations, Murdoch’s name cropped up, so I dusted off my dog-eared paperback edition from 1977. Join us for a readalong.