''Elegy for Iris'' is a 1999 memoir by John Bayley. In it, he recounts his forty-two year marriage to fellow author

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...

and her struggles with

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

in the last years of her life. It is a companion book to Bayley's other works about Murdoch: '' Iris and Her Friends'' and '' Widower's House''. For ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', Mary Gordon wrote that Bayley's narrative is "a continuing act of heroic love, but the heroism plays itself out in a register that is unfamiliar to contemporary audiences, particularly American ones. Its dominant notes are humility, modesty, patience and humor. The heroism is all the more admirable for its reluctance to acknowledge that heroism might be defined in such terms." The 2001 film ''

Iris Iris most often refers to: *Iris (anatomy), part of the eye *Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess * ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants * Iris (color), an ambiguous color term Iris or IRIS may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional ent ...

'' is inspired by ''Elegy for Iris'', focusing on the beginning and ending of Bayley and Murdoch's lives together.

First edition

*St. Martin's Press, 1999, (hardbound)

First edition

References

Further reading