Here, for the first time, a selection of Iris Murdoch's most interesting and important letters has been collected together to give us a full, living portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers. The letters show a great mind at work--we see the young Murdoch struggling with difficult philosophical issues, often unsure of herself intellectually; we witness her anguish as a mature writer when a novel won't come together; we see her reflecting on the intricacies of human relationships; we see her fulminating about world events and exploring spirituality. They also reveal her personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its complexity--her sharp sense of humour, her irreverence, her emotional hunger and her tendency to live on the edge of what was socially acceptable. Gradually, we see the ways in which her complicated emotional life fed into her novels' plots and characters, despite her claims that her fictional characters were not drawn from real life. Full of previously unpublished letters, this is the most significant publication about Murdoch since the wave of books published in the wake of her death.