DEAR MR MURRAY: Letters to A Gentleman Publisher

The publishing house of John Murray was founded in Fleet Street in 1768 and remained a family business for over seven generations. Published in its 250th year to celebrate this remarkable achievement, this book is a collection of some of the best letters from hundreds of thousands held in the John Murray Archive and elsewhere, intended to entertain and inspire, and never intended for publication. They reveal not only the story of some of the most interesting and influential books of all time, but also the remarkable friendships and occasional animosities between author and publisher, readers, editors, printers and illustrators. Correspondents include Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, John Betjeman, David Livingstone, Freya Stark, Patrick Leigh Fermor, even Queen Victoria plus Walter Scott, Caroline Lamb, James Hogg, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Mary Somerville 'The queen of science', George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman, and 'I've been bribed to go on RTE' from Dervla Murphy. 'One letter describes the excitement when Paddy Leigh Fermor tracked down Lord Byron's slippers in Missolonghi and sent back a tracing of them for my father to check against Byron's boots in our collection.' By 2006, the 'dynasty' of the Murrays consisted of over 500,000 manuscript letters as well as manuscripts of many of their authors? works. It was the largest private publishing archive in the world covering writers, explorers, scientists, politicians, and archaeologists. A super book to dip into time and again, 298pp, illus.