A Publisher and his Friends
Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843

An 1891 two-volume account of the life of the publisher John Murray (1778–1843), told largely through his correspondence.

Samuel Smiles (Author)

9781108073929, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2014

570 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 3.2 cm, 0.72 kg

This two-volume account of the life and friendships of the publisher John Murray (1778–1843), told largely through his voluminous correspondence, was published in 1891 by Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), whose Lives of the Engineers, Self-Help, and other works are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Murray was only fifteen when his father, the founder of the famous firm, died, but after a period of apprenticeship he took sole control of the business, becoming the friend as well as the publisher of a range of the most important writers of the first half of the nineteenth century, in both literature and science. Perhaps his most famous author was Lord Byron, whose memoir of his own life, considered unpublishable, was burned in the fireplace at Murray's office in Albemarle Street, London. Volume 2 describes innovations including the famous travel guides, and ends with an assessment of Murray's publishing career.

20. Works published in 1817–18
21. Mr Southey and the Quarterly
22. Hallam, Basil Hall, Crabbe, etc.
23. Memoirs of Lady Hervey, Horace Walpole, Belzoni, etc.
24. Washington Irving, Ugo Foscolo, Lady Caroline Lamb, etc.
25. Gifford's retirement and death
26. The Representative
27. Mr Lockhart as editor of the Quarterly, etc.
28. Head, Disraeli, Lockhart, etc.
29. Napier's Peninsular War, etc.
30. Moore's Life of Byron
31. Benjamin Disraeli, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Francis Head
32. Various authors' correspondence
33. Literary ladies
34. Scrope, Hallam, Gladstone, etc.
35. Murray's 'Handbooks'
36. George Borrow, Richard Ford, etc.
37. John Murray as a publisher
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]