In 1971 Iris Murdoch talked enthusiastically of the importance of children's stories and storytelling: "I think my ideal book is Treasure Island […] this was the first book in my life, I think, and I never really got over it. One likes adventure and to unravel a series of adventures is a very delightful occupation."¹ There is a crucial duality to this declaration: the act of unravelling belongs both to the attentive reader, engaging with and making sense of the author's text, and to the writer, providing a text for the reader to unravel. From the outset Murdoch was reading as storyteller, and the books that she remembered and valued from those early years were especially suited to this double vision. This essay links with the contemporary critical debate concerning the impact of children's literature on adult fiction, which was inaugurated by Juliet Dusinberre's study Alice to the Lighthouse (1987), as it explores ways in which Murdoch's early reading influenced her development as a novelist.² She herself claimed no such direct influence but she spoke often of the books she enjoyed as a child, and her novels are full of explicit and implicit references to these works. What she read lived in her imagination and was used in her work. She learned verbal humour and comic timing, narrative excitement and narrative pace, a variety of strategies for plot development, the creation of strong and dangerous enchanter figures, the importance of creating rich and detailed physical settings.