Book review: Dear Mr Murray by David McClay

Few, if any, names in publishing are as revered as John Murray. Since the first of his name left Edinburgh and set up in Fleet Street in 1768, there have been six more generations of John Murrays, all greatly respected as men of integrity, fairness and generosity.

When the seventh John Murray sold the business (it lives on as an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton), he transferred its archive of 500,000 letters to the National Library of Scotland. This book, compiled to celebrate the company’s 250th anniversary, is just a small sampling of that treasure trove, featuring correspondence from Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, Herman Melville, Felix Mendelssohn and many more.

Its early association with Byron helped put the company on the literary map, and one can read here letters from him discussing the publication of the controversial Don Juan, the threat of edits to his work prompting an epic rant about “the precise worth of popular applause” and the “insolent condescension” of the English.

Some were dismayed that the nobleman Byron should address John Murray II as an equal. Such was the Murrays’ ability to inspire trust and respect. But they were publishers, and fated to suffer the slings and arrows of ungrateful authors too. John Murray II was the worst at answering letters promptly, provoking Wordsworth to declare that Murray thought himself “too great a personage for anyone but a court, an aristocrat or most fashionable author to deal with”. Thirty-two years later, David Livingstone became incandescent when he saw the illustrations intended for his first book, fuming, “Everyone who knows what a lion is like will die laughing at it.”

The story of the Murray dynasty intersects with history at many points, perhaps most conspicuously with the publication of On the Origin of Species. But even Charles Darwin’s letters take a back seat to literary adviser Rev Whitwell Elwin’s assessment of his manuscript. Although a man of the cloth, Elwin did not object on religious grounds, but actually recommended that Darwin beef up the scientific content to give his theories greater substance. And there should be more pigeons in it. “Everybody is interested in pigeons.”

Also included is a letter forged by Lady Caroline Lamb, impersonating Byron in an attempt to trick Murray II out of a portrait left in his safekeeping. The crude forgery worked. She got her painting. Stranger still is the 1949 correspondence with Adrian Conan Doyle, so enraged by critic Harold Nicolson’s remarks about his father that he proposes they settle their differences with a duel. John “Jock” Murray V later confessed he enjoyed the intrigue of being their secret mediator.

Whether angry, apologetic, wheedling or rude, the fondness and regard in which the Murrays were held by their correspondents shines through. As well as allowing us glimpses behind the public faces of some exalted authors, McClay has paid tribute here to a remarkable line whose shared name became synonymous with a sense of responsibility to their company, their authors and literature itself.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT