Memoir of John Murray
John Murray to Thomas Moore, 24 May 1831
The cross letter, as you term it, did
not reach me until this morning, and, from the manner in which the subject of
it had been previously settled, I should not have thought it necessary to
allude to it again, were it not for the interference of your
“advising” friends.
This is not a solitary instance in which some of them have
with morbid liberality evinced a kind disposition to give large sums of money
to their own friends, to be paid by drafts, not upon
their own bankers, but upon mine. Would these honorary
patrons of men of letters enquire ![]()
| COST OF BYRON’S ‘LIFE.’ | 325 |
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into facts, they would
sometimes be startled into the meritorious selfishness of making the case their
own; and then before they ventured to impugn the liberality of others, they
would perhaps consider what, in similar circumstances, they would have done
themselves. Had these warmhearted friends made enquiries on the present
occasion, they would have been informed that the copyright of the ‘Life of Byron’ was
purchased by the following sums, viz.:
£
1. By discharging the author’s bond to Messrs.
Longman, with payment of interest thereon
3020
2. By two bills 1200
3. By Cash 100
4. By remitting what was due from America 300
£4620
Interest on the above £3020 for twenty months before the first
volume was published, not charged to author, but paid by publisher 250
———
£4870
Besides contributing one half of the work myself by
Lord Byron’s letters to his publisher,
valued at £2000.
The printing of the work cost bonâ fide
4430
Copyright (as above) 4870
———
£9300
Total receipt, even if the whole were sold 9000
———
Loss on the first edition to its illiberal proprietor £300
As a mercantile speculation it is hardly to be thought of,
and there has been such a hue and cry raised against certain parts of the work,
that it is quite a livre defendu in some families; so that the entire sale of
the work cannot be depended on.
Let your friends see this statement, and then decide upon the
conduct of,
My dear Sir,
Yours most sincerely,
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
