Byron and John Murray : A Poet and His Publisher [1 ed.] 9781781387542, 9781781381335

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay a p oe t a n d h is pu bl is h e r

li v er pool english te x ts a nd st udie s 64

Byron and John Murray A Poet and His Publisher

Mary O’Connell

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Byron and John Murray First published 2014 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2014 Mary O’Connell The right of Mary O’Connell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78138-133-5 epdf ISBN 978-1-78138-754-2 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound by BooksFactory.co.uk

For Michael and Ber O’Connell

Contents contents Illustrations

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Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 John Murray I and II

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Chapter 2 ‘Lord Byron turns pro’

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Chapter 3 Janus-Faced: James Cawthorn and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, John Murray and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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Chapter 4 ‘… and found myself famous’

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Chapter 5 ‘I have written too much’

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Chapter 6 John Murray and ‘the Demon of Silence’: Byron in Exile

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Chapter 7 ‘a book without a bookseller’

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Conclusion

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Works Cited

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Index

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Illustrations illustrations I am grateful to John and Virginia Murray and the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland for these images, and for the permission to reproduce them. Fig. 1 Byron to John Murray, 11 April 1818. JMA, MS. 43489.

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Fig. 2 John Murray II, by H.W. Pickersgill. John Murray Collection.

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Fig. 3 Emma O’Connell, Byron, after Thomas Phillips, 2009 pen, ink and acrylic. Private Collection. By kind permission of the artist.

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Fig. 4 John Murray to Byron, 4 September 1811. JMA, MS. 43494.

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Fig. 5 Drawing Room at Fifty Albemarle Street. Watercolour by L. Werner c. 1850. John Murray Collection.

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Fig. 6 John Murray to Byron, 30 September 1813. JMA, MS. 43494.

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Fig. 7 Byron to John Murray, 21 August 1817. JMA, MS. 43489.

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Fig. 8 John Murray to Byron, 29 October 1822. JMA, MS. 43497.

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Acknowledgements acknowledgements I must begin by expressing my deep gratitude to the late Andrew Nicholson. Andrew corresponded with me when I was finishing my doctoral thesis and kindly sent me his transcriptions of John Murray’s letters to Byron. I could never have written my thesis, or this book, without the benefit of his fine scholarship. I am especially grateful to Graham Allen, who supervised my doctoral thesis, for always believing that I would write this book. I am more indebted than I can say to the kindness and intellectual generosity of Jane Stabler. I thank her for her thoughtful criticism of various chapters, which improved the text immensely, and for long walks in St Andrews discussing Byron, John Murray and Italian ice cream. Special thanks to David McClay, curator of the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland, for his enthusiasm and assistance with several queries; the John Murray papers are in very good hands. I also thank Rachel Beattie and the staff at the National Library of Scotland. I am grateful to the Irish Research Council for a doctoral scholarship that allowed me to begin my work on Byron and John Murray, and to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Fellowship to the University of St Andrews. I greatly appreciate the encouragement and support of the Byron Societies in England and Ireland, particularly Ken Purslow, the late Maureen Crisp, Allan Gregory, Rosemarie Rowley and Maureen O’Connor. Peter Cochran is a mine of information on all things Byron related and I thank him for many years of good-humoured correspondence. Thanks to Anthony Cond and Liverpool University Press for their interest in this book, and to both readers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. I have received advice and encouragement from many friends and colleagues and wish to thank the following: Donna Alexander, Bernard Beatty, Siobhán Collins, Louise Denmead, Tom Dunne, Anne FitzGerald, Meabh Long, Miriam Maume, Eilis Murphy, Orla Murphy, Carmel Murphy, Kerry Murphy, Margaret Murphy, Aine Sheehan, ix

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Matthew Ward and Tim Webb. I make special mention of two great friends, Loretta Brady and Carrie Griffin. My deepest debt of gratitude is to my parents. I thank my father Michael O’Connell for his love and support, and my mother Ber O’Connell for giving me a great gift by teaching me to love books (and Arsenal). It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this book to them. Thanks also to Emma O’Connell, Garry O’Connell, Sinead Ní Fhathaigh and the newest member of our family, who has quickly positioned herself at the centre of it, my niece Ornaith O’Connell. I also thank my husband’s family, Lil Lenihan, Billy Lenihan and Eoin Lenihan. I am lucky to have an uncle like Gerard Quirke, and Brendan and Killian Quirke know that they are more like brothers than cousins. My husband Liam Lenihan never minded sharing me with a temperamental poet and a busy publisher and I will have to take a line from Byron for him: ‘the love which my spirit hath painted / It never hath found but in thee’.

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Abbreviations abbreviations BLJ Lord Byron, Byron’s Letters and Journals, 13 vols, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray, 1973–94) CMP Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) CPW Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, 7 vols, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93) JMA John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland LJM The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, ed. Andrew Nicholson. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007) RR The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers, part B, 5 vols, ed. Donald H. Reiman (New York: Garland, 1972) SS Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of John Murray; With an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1891) Quotations from The Diary of John Cam Hobhouse are taken from Peter Cochran’s edition, which is available online at http://petercochran.files. wordpress.com/2009/12/00-introduction.pdf The originals are held at the British Library. For Douglas Kinnaird’s correspondence with Byron, I have used the originals in the National Library of Scotland, checked against Peter Cochran’s transcriptions, also available online at: http://petercochran. wordpress.com/byron-and-kinnaird-1814-1821/

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Introduction1 introduction In August 1814 John Murray wrote a letter to Byron in which he defended himself against an accusation of publishing a poorly written advertisement for Lara (LJM, 103–105). The original text of the advertisement had been written by John Cam Hobhouse and read ‘The reader of Lara may probably regard it as a sequel to The Corsair’. Following advice from William Gifford, Murray changed it to ‘The reader of Lara may probably regard it as a sequel to a poem that recently appeared’. Incensed, Hobhouse made a ‘strong representation’ to the publisher, to no avail, and wrote to Byron complaining that it was ‘downright vulgarism to use “that” for “which … it is bad grammar altogether’.2 In 1814 Murray had been Byron’s publisher for two years and his letters of this period demonstrate his increasing self-assurance in dealing with his most famous poet. His response was a confident defence of himself, bemoaning what he called the ‘fastidiousness and Hypercriticism of Friendship’ and stated that he felt ‘perfectly secure’ against the criticism (LJM, 104). After claiming that no one had noticed, that the words were Gifford’s and that John Hookham Frere and John Herman Merivale supported his opinion, Murray cites four examples from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary to justify the corrections to Hobhouse’s text: – but to Johnson That – 1 not this 2 Which: relating to an antecedent thing The mark that is set before him      Perkins The time that clogs me      Shakespeare Bones that hasten to be so      Cowley Judgement that is equal      Wilkins

He concludes the parade of examples by asking Byron, ‘Are you 1

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answered?’ (LJM, 104). Before his invocation of Johnson, Murray had suggested that as Byron ‘is found out to be Dryden’, his publisher ‘is, I suppose, to be treated like Tonson’. Andrew Nicholson rightly points out that such a comparison is not only high praise of Byron, but of Murray himself (LJM, 107). Jacob Tonson, the ‘prince of booksellers’, was famous as the publisher of John Dryden and one of the most influential and important figures of the eighteenth-century book trade.3 Considering the context of Murray’s letter, written to placate a poet who had described himself as in ‘a fever’ over the advertisement, it is likely that Murray is not only comparing himself to a celebrated publisher of a great author, but also to a publisher who had to manage a temperamental one (BLJ IV, 154). Tonson’s literary association with Dryden was a highly profitable one, but author and publisher also had a series of famously acrimonious disputes over financial matters. Many critics have credited Tonson’s shrewd commercial sense as a crucial factor in Dryden’s success; nevertheless, as disagreements over payments increased, Dryden denounced his publisher as a ‘sharper’ and wrote the venomous ‘Fragment of a Character of Jacob Tonson, His Publisher’, wherein Tonson is described ‘With leering looks, Bull-fac’d, and freckl’d fair, / With two left legs, and Judas-colour’d Hair, / And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air’.4 Murray was not the only person to suggest that he deserved to be named among the great booksellers. In a humorous parody of William Cowper’s ‘My Mary’, Byron likened Murray to a host of eighteenthcentury establishment publishers: Strahan, Tonson Lintot of the times, Patron and publisher of rhymes, For thee the bard up Pindus climbs, My Murray. To thee, with hope and terror dumb, The unfledged MS. authors come; Thou printest all – and sellest some– My Murray. Upon thy table’s baize so green The last new Quarterly is seen,– But where is thy new Magazine, My Murray? Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine The works thou deemest most divine –

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i n t roduc t ion The ‘Art of Cookery,’ and mine, My Murray. Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist, And Sermons, to thy mill bring grist; And then thou hast the ‘Navy List,’ My Murray. And Heaven forbid I should conclude Without ‘the Board of Longitude,’ Although this narrow paper would, My Murray. (BLJ VI, 29)

The scenario imagined in the poem is redolent of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad as Byron invokes the image of a host of terrified authors descending on Albemarle Street in the hope that Murray would undertake the publication of their works. The image was no exaggeration; in 1817 Murray wrote to Byron describing having ‘waded through seven hundred rejected poems in the course of a year’ (SS I, 347). Byron’s claim that Murray indiscriminately ‘printest all – and sellest some’ is clearly evocative of a mercantile scenario where publishers print and sell large numbers of books to add to an already overcrowded marketplace. The image alludes to (but also laughs at) Murray’s role as a judge of literature. The notion that the books the publisher ‘deemest most divine’ rest on his ‘sprucest bookshelves’ simultaneously suggests Murray’s shop, but also the opulence of the drawing room at Albemarle Street. Byron references the wide variety of Murray’s publications by associating his own works with the bestselling New System of Domestic Cookery: Founded upon Principles of Economy; and Adapted to the Use of Private Families – on Murray’s bookshelves, Byron stands on equal terms with Maria Rundell. It was not the first time the poet had pondered his commercial union with the author of the bestselling cookery book of the age; replying to Murray’s report from an Edinburgh bookseller that ‘The Harold and Cookery are much wanted’, Byron wearily reflected ‘Such is fame’ (BLJ III, 238). Murray and Byron’s likening of the publisher to Jacob Tonson is more significant than a simple allusion to mutual success or an example of Byron’s wit. The analogy reveals both men’s perceptions of their literary association, which, although modern in the exploitation of the poet’s fame, in many ways resembled an eighteenth-century author/ publisher relationship. The ‘My Murray’ poem, written in Venice in 1818, is illustrative of Byron’s ambivalent attitude towards the literary 3

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Fig. 1 Byron to John Murray, 11 April 1818. JMA, MS. 43489.

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marketplace, and to Murray himself. It offers an affectionate caricature of the publisher and an entertaining description of his thriving business. Replete with the imagery of trade, the poem demonstrates Byron casting Murray in the dual role of publisher and patron of literature; in doing so, he references the role of the bookseller in facilitating the production of literature. When referring to John Murray, I have used the terms bookseller and publisher interchangeably. Murray himself does so throughout all his correspondence, as does Byron. There is no obvious pattern in their usage of the terms. Murray refers to himself deprecatingly as a bookseller, but also as a publisher. Similarly, when justifying his decisions regarding Byron’s works he will ask the poet to indulge him for his ‘Booksellers sake’ or remind him to ‘consider [his] publisher … and be pacified’ (LJM, 187). When Byron is addressing, praising or abusing Murray he does not distinguish between his use of the words bookseller and publisher. Nevertheless, the distinction is an important one. In the early to mid-eighteenth century the word ‘bookseller’ implied a combination of the functions of a retail bookseller and a publisher. As the trade expanded towards the latter half of the century, the distinction between the various roles became clearer.5 Often despised as having ‘too much of a commercial character to be generally interesting’, many bookseller/ publishers were still recognised as ‘carrying forward the great work of national enlightenment’.6 There is a great deal of scholarship on the rise of the literary marketplace and the consequent impact on literature of the period, but few studies consider the specific impact of a single publisher in the Romantic period as a mediator between author and audience, or as a figure capable of exerting a formative influence on the text.7 In his study Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (2004), Zachary Lesser laments the fact that the publisher is still ‘largely the concern of the book historian, separated by a disciplinary gulf from literary critics, largely because it has not been clear how publishers might matter for our readings of text’.8 There is also the matter of confronting the notion that the publisher’s influence is inevitably a contaminating one. In a call for wider scholarship on individual publishers, Alistair McCleery claims that the publisher has routinely been seen as an ‘enemy rather than as facilitator or collaborator … the pimp associated with the commercialization of art … as obstacle to the unfettered communication of author with reader’.9 This perception of booksellers and publishers has a powerful historical basis. In particular, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors and 6

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critics frequently describe booksellers and publishers in contemptuous terms as representative of the most distasteful elements of the trade. Publishing is of course commercial, but it is also inherently artistic. As James Raven reminds us, it is, in effect, ‘commerce in intellectual wares’.10 This union of commerce and art was habitually deplored by authors. Charles Lamb was among the most venomous when describing his thoughts on publishers. Advising a friend to throw himself ‘from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes … rather than turn slave to the Booksellers’, he claimed that booksellers were ‘a rapacious, dishonest set’ who despised authors. According to Lamb, the reason ‘those fellows hate us’ was that contrary to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit (a jeweller or silversmith for instance), and the journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the background, – in our work the world gives all the credit to us, whom they consider as their journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches!11

In his journal, Thomas Moore wrote of hearing a particularly vivid story where ‘the booksellers drank their wine (in the manner of the heroes in the halls of Odin) out of author’s skulls’.12 The disdain is often casual, for example, in a letter to Walter Scott, Thomas Campbell describes John Murray as ‘a very excellent and gentlemanlike man – albeit a bookseller’ (SS I, 325). Despite the function of the publisher in selecting and promoting literature and his role as arbiter of taste, they are often portrayed as parasitical figures profiting from the labours of writers, and are usually characterised as manipulators rather than facilitators of literature. To take an example broadly representative of the tenor of criticism across eighteenth-century authors, Oliver Goldsmith dismissed most booksellers as tradesmen ‘whose learning does not extend beyond the multiplication-table and the London Evening-Post’ and predicted a ‘fatal revolution whereby writing is converted to a mechanic trade; and booksellers, instead of the great, become the patrons and paymasters of men of genius’.13 The mercantile aspect of literature was condemned in equal measure to the idea of literature as a ‘mechanic trade’. The connotations of the marketplace are obvious, and we are reminded of the physical act of writing, of the printing and manufacturing of books, of authors whom Byron might describe as having ‘the pen peeping from behind the ear – & the thumbs a little inky’ (BLJ V, 192). There was a 7

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clear distinction between those who wrote, or published to make money, and those who did so for artistic reasons. Samuel Johnson derided those he called ‘the manufacturers of literature, who have set up for authors, either with or without a regular initiation, and like other artificers, have no other care than to deliver their tale of wares at the stated time’.14 Of course, Johnson also asserted that no ‘man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’, and admitted to writing Rasselas in a week in order to pay for his mother’s funeral.15 Although in many ways Johnson was the embodiment of a professional writer, and described his publisher Robert Dodsley as his patron, he also lamented that he was forced into writing to make a living. There were authors who could afford to write and refuse remuneration for their works, and there were those who had no choice but to accept payment. For publishers there was little choice – in a fiercely competitive marketplace they either made money or went out of business. Johnson describes the situation with characteristic good sense: ‘I suppose, with all our scholastic ignorance of mankind, we are still too knowing to expect that the booksellers will erect themselves into patrons, and buy and sell under the influence of a disinterested zeal for the promotion of learning’.16 Isaac D’Israeli echoed Johnson’s statement in 1812, writing that publishers are ‘but commercial men. A trader can never be deemed a patron, for it would be romantic to purchase what is not saleable’.17 As authors were divided between those who wrote for mercenary or genuine motives, booksellers and publishers were subject to similar distinctions. There were those considered profiteering tradesmen, such as Edmund Curll, and those who were viewed as patrons of literature, such as Robert Dodsley and Joseph Johnson. Publishers who had tried writing themselves were often looked on with particular favour. Lisa Maruca clarifies this rationale further by explaining that in ‘the moral terms in which this rhetoric is usually couched, the “good” booksellers are ones who understood their secondary role’.18 Goldsmith exempted these booksellers from his wrath, claiming that he would always be ‘in favour of such booksellers and printers as have distinguished themselves by their literary talents: these I honour, and shall always look upon as gentlemen, though they have the misfortune of keeping shop’.19 Later chroniclers of the book trade often distinguished between a bookseller, and ‘a gentleman dealing in books’.20 Byron did so himself, advising Murray to be mindful of the difference between a tradesman and a gentleman (BLJ X, 28). In her eulogy for Joseph Johnson, the highest 8

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praise Maria Edgeworth could give the radical publisher was to claim that he Raised the drooping bard from Earth And fostered rising Genius from his birth; His Liberal spirit a Profession made, Of what with vulgar souls is vulgar Trade.21

William Cowper, who was also published by Joseph Johnson, conceded that ‘perhaps it would be well for authors in general if their booksellers, when men of some taste, were allowed, though not to tinker the work themselves, yet to point out the flaws, and humbly to recommend an improvement’.22 Publishers needed to negotiate between the commercial and intellectual imperatives of their business. Those perceived as great publishers were frequently those who, although highly successful, distanced themselves from more obvious commercial motives. Although he was not a radical publisher like Joseph Johnson, John Murray endeavoured to present himself in this way, as a liberal patron of the arts. Similar to the praise lavished on Joseph Johnson by Edgeworth, William Blackwood celebrated Murray for making publishing ‘a liberal profession and not a mere business of the pence’ (SS II, 456). Although the terms are used interchangeably, it is reasonable to assert that the term ‘bookseller’ is often used to reinforce the mercantile aspects of the trade; the term ‘publisher’ is more in line with Edgeworth and Blackwood’s characterisation of it as a profession. An example from Samuel Smiles’s biography of Murray illuminates the significance of the use of these terms. Describing the circumstances of publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Smiles cites a letter from Byron to Francis Hodgson, dated 13 October 1811. Byron complained to Hodgson about Murray’s plans to publish the poem in quarto format; the poet claimed it was ‘a cursed unsaleable size’, although he conceded that as the poem was ‘pestilent long … one must obey one’s publisher’ (SS I, 210). The text of the original letter differs from the text Smiles cites: Byron actually wrote ‘one must obey one’s bookseller’ (BLJ II, 113). Smiles silently changed one word; the bookseller of Byron’s letter becomes a publisher in his memoir. The biography, A Publisher and His Friends is a house history of the Murray firm, typical of the kind produced in the nineteenth century. The late nineteenth century in particular saw a proliferation of such memoirs authored by publishers themselves, relatives or sympathetic biographers keen to ‘defend their heroes from charges of vulgar commercialism’.23 While it is a valuable and comprehensive account of the history of Murray’s firm, Smiles’s text needs to be regarded with caution. 9

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He includes extracts from eighteen letters from Murray to Byron, and of those only six accurately reflect what the publisher wrote. In total, Smiles eliminates thirty-three instances of ‘your Lordship’, along with sentences such as ‘it will be my anxious endeavour to preserve, through life, the happiness of your Lordship’s steady confidence’. The suggestion that Murray was overly servile in his tone (even if we restore all the ‘your Lordship’s’) is easily dismissed if we compare his letters to others Byron received from other publishers, which are all very similar, including later letters from the radical publisher James Ridgeway and John Hunt.24 Murray’s letters are sometimes deferential, as was typical of letters of the time addressed to a member of the nobility. They are also characteristic of a publisher’s admiring letter to his successful author. Smiles’s alterations indicate motives other than the elimination of the occasional obsequious phrase; they are consistent with his overall objective in the memoir, which is to present Murray the publisher as a facilitator of authors and a distributor of knowledge. Throughout the memoir Smiles focuses on Murray’s diplomacy, tact, judgement and taste. We are told that even as a schoolboy, although Murray was not ‘a finished scholar’ he had ‘acquired a thorough love of knowledge and literature, and a keen perception of the beauties of our great English classics’. Smiles continues to tell us that it was through the cultivation of this ‘purity of taste’ that Murray ‘laid the foundations of that quick discrimination, which combined with [a] rapidly growing knowledge of men and authors, rendered him afterwards so useful, and even powerful, in the pursuit of his profession’ (SS I, 30). Throughout the memoir, Murray’s motivation as a publisher is always distanced from the commercial; Smiles intends the reader to see him as someone who wished to promote the best of English literature. Since the publication of Andrew Nicholson’s edition of The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron in 2007 we have a real insight than into the nature of Byron’s literary relationship with his publisher. Reviewing the volume for The Telegraph, Jonathan Bate wrote that ‘literary history knows nothing more glorious than a close collaboration between a poet of genius and a publisher of commitment’ and confidently asserted that the letters made ‘all existing biographies of Byron obsolete’.25 Murray’s letters to Byron are a fascinating record of an association that lasted over ten years. The prevailing view of their relationship is best encapsulated by David Ellis, who states that ‘Murray was a strange publisher for Byron to have’.26 Caroline Franklin concurs, claiming that it was ‘the greatest paradox of Byron’s literary life’ that his works were published by 10

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Murray.27 Such views are based on the assumption that it was peculiar that a poet like Byron would be published by the man who published the Tory Quarterly Review and who prided himself on his friends in the government. The focus on divergent politics has led to the supposition that Murray constricted or censored Byron’s poetry to make it suitable for the ‘delicate air of Albemarle Street’ (RR, B: IV, 1597). Peter Cochran has written that ‘the fact that he had John Murray as a publisher was a jinx on Byron’s literary existence comparable to the jinx which his marriage to Annabella Milbanke was on his personal life’ and Tom Mole has described what he calls Murray’s ‘strategy of containment’ and ‘identity constraint’.28 The assumption that the publisher effectively controlled Byron is also articulated by Jerome Christensen, who describes Murray as ‘Colonel Parker to Byron’s Elvis’.29 Christensen’s comment may be flippant, but the commercial connotations of his comparison show an understanding of Murray’s dealings with Byron, which were always more concerned with sales and reputation than with politics. Temperamentally Murray was certainly conservative but Jonathan Cutmore is right to remind us that ‘it is not at all clear that he was a man of strong, perhaps any, core political convictions’.30 Murray’s association of his firm with establishment figures is evidence of his shrewd commercial sense more than it is of any entrenched political belief. He often asked Byron to change certain political sentiments in his poetry but it was almost always because he did not want to be deprived of ‘customers amongst the Orthodox’ (LJM, 3). There were also several occasions, for example the publication of the politically charged ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’, where the publisher disregarded political sentiment in favour of greater commercial success. Murray’s attempts to recruit Leigh Hunt to write for the Quarterly also demonstrate his desire to secure a wider readership even at the expense of the avowed principles of his own review. It would be very easy to present Murray as a man with few principles beyond the commercial. In Cutmore’s exhaustive and illuminating study of the history of the Quarterly Review, Murray is variously described as ‘passive-aggressive’, ‘a busybody’, ‘rational and calculating’ and ‘a benign Svengali’.31 It is also intimated that he manipulated and controlled his authors and editors through overly generous payments. Crucially, Cutmore acknowledges that Murray ‘was a businessman risking capital in the expectation of gaining profits and commercial prestige’ and as such we should remember that ‘the publisher stood in a fundamentally different relationship’ to editors and authors.32 Despite being lauded as 11

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one of the foremost publishers of his day, Murray was repeatedly accused of being weak minded and hesitant. Walter Scott described the ‘timidity of temper which made Byron term the great Lord of Albemarle Street the most timorous of Gods Booksellers’.33 Much of what Byron would call Murray’s ‘shuffling’ was due to his cautious temperament, it was also due to the fact that, as a publisher, it was Murray’s job to read not for himself, but for other people. John Wilson Croker described Murray as ‘you who speak with the voice of the public’ and even Byron conceded that that when it came to hesitancy ‘a publisher can hardly help it – it is their nature’ (LJM, 225; BLJ VII, 255). Murray was an astute businessman but he was also restrained in his dealings. He was not a publisher like Joseph Johnson or John Hunt, who were prepared to go to prison for their publications, nor was he a publisher like Archibald Constable, whose business went bankrupt due to his poor financial decisions. Murray built his firm on solid foundations, so much so that he was able to absorb the massive loss of £26,000 on one of his few ill-advised ventures, The Representative. This book describes his relationship to his most famous poet. What was Murray’s relationship with Byron? There are 172 surviving letters from Murray to Byron and 513 from Byron to Murray.34 Byron was a prolific correspondent and it has long been widely acknowledged that his letters to Murray are among the most engaging and revealing that he ever wrote. Almost a quarter of Byron’s surviving letters are addressed to Murray and they illuminate the remarkable narrative of their fluctuating relationship. In his preface to his edition of Byron’s letters, Leslie Marchand sympathised with the publisher as ‘seldom in history has a publisher been scolded as Byron belaboured Murray’ (BLJ I, 11). Byron was certainly a ‘high-maintenance’ author and Murray has rightly been seen as ‘long-suffering’.35 Murray remembered Byron visiting his shop in Fleet Street and practicing fencing techniques by aiming at the bookshelves, unsurprisingly adding ‘I was sometimes … glad to get rid of him!’36 Byron had been one of Murray’s authors for only a month when he wished his publisher would jump in the canal, and years later instructed Thomas Moore to ‘nail Murray … to his own counter’ (BLJ II, 100; VIII, 215). When they are not imagining physical violence, Byron’s letters to Murray document his changing and contradictory opinions towards writing, fame, reputation and literary immortality. Murray’s letters to Byron are practical, often amusing, anecdotal and patient. Clearly delighted to be Byron’s publisher, Murray is also subtly argumentative with his writer, and does not hesitate to remind his author of his 12

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expertise in publishing. Byron regularly disagreed with Murray but he often complied, knowing his publisher played a key role in his success. The sales of Byron’s poetry certainly helped to establish Murray as one of the leading publishers of the period. Byron was also indebted to his publisher in many ways; as Peter Graham writes, for much of their relationship, Byron ‘seems to have needed Murray more than Murray needed him’.37 Jerome Christensen argues that ‘the imprint of a prestigious publisher served as a kind of canonical legitimation’, and Byron’s association with the establishment publisher certainly protected him from criticism he might otherwise have endured, particularly following the separation scandal.38 The most striking example of this is Murray preventing the Quarterly Review from publishing a ‘moral disquisition on Byron’s conduct and character’ after the events of 1816. The publisher felt that it was frankly ‘ridiculous to attempt to convert a man in a Review’ and arranged instead for Walter Scott to write a review of the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.39 Murray knew that Scott admired Byron and was sympathetic to the poet’s personal situation. Scott wrote a generous and sensitive review, even instructing Murray to ‘fling the sheets in the fire’ if he thought there was anything likely to hurt Byron ‘either in his feelings or with the public’.40 Byron’s contemporaries were in no doubt that an association with a prestigious publishing firm would bring benefits of this kind. William Hazlitt was resentful of the fact that Byron seemed ‘scarcely vulnerable to the critics’ and he knew why: ‘to be well spoken of, [the poet] must enlist under some standard; he must belong to some coterie. He must get the espirit de corps on his side; he must have literary bail in readiness. Thus they prop one another’s rickety heads at Murray’s shop’.41 Hazlitt’s image of a coterie was an accurate one. Murray’s premises at Albemarle Street attracted a host of famous authors and critics who formed what Byron called Murray’s ‘back-shop synod’ or ‘Utican Senate’ (BLJ VII, 106). The ‘senate’ were an influential group of writers and Murray’s connection with them, combined with Byron being his leading author, the success of the Quarterly Review and the blockbuster sales of Domestic Cookery, established Murray as a powerful publisher. A satire entitled ‘The Age Reviewed’ by Robert Montgomery gives us a glimpse of popular opinion as he describes how ‘no sterling volumes dare to sell / Save Murray buy’.42 In an expression of what Christensen calls their ‘affable megalomania’, the Scottish publisher Archibald Constable styled Murray ‘The Emperor of the West’.43 Murray’s role in Byron’s life has been described in biographies of 13

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the poet, and he is acknowledged in accounts that are concerned with Byron’s attitude towards publishing, but there is no study that fully illuminates the significance of their association and no study that asks whether Murray had any real impact on Byron’s poetry or the trajectory of his career. This is partly due to a lack of information about Murray. For many years scholars were forbidden from reading Murray’s letters to Byron as John Murray VI felt they were sycophantic and showed his ancestor in an unflattering light. It is also perhaps due to a general lack of critical attention to the publisher, and an unwillingness to view publishers as potential collaborators. In a recent article entitled ‘How to Analyze a Correspondence: The Example of Byron and John Murray’, Andrew Elfenbein highlights how ‘weird is the traditional academic focus on only the famous author’s side of the correspondence, as if the words of addressees did not count’.44 Elfenbein’s analysis of the correspondence employs ‘psychoanalytic concepts of perspective taking and common ground’ and offers a fascinating view of the letters in terms of their significance as a business correspondence, and as a correspondence that later becomes more personal.45 He describes the problems that occurred when Byron left England and the relationship became more difficult, in part because Byron became frustrated with Murray’s lack of correspondence (the publisher was never a prolific letter writer and in any case was overwhelmed with correspondence relating to the Quarterly Review). Aside from problems caused by the nature of the postal system, Elfenbein identifies two imbalances in the correspondence. Firstly, he asserts that no ‘previous publisher ever had a relationship like Murray’s to Byron because no previous author was like Byron. Neither quite knew how to address the other’.46 The second imbalance he claims is ‘less noticed’, and that is that ‘Byron never acknowledges the flattery: he does not say that he is pleased, embarrassed, or indifferent’.47 Byron does acknowledge the flattery though. He does so in one of the first letters he writes to Murray, where he states the ‘time seems to be past when (as Dr Johnson said) a man was certain to “hear the truth from his bookseller”, for you have paid me so many compliments, that, if I was not the veriest scribbler on Earth, I should feel affronted’. The reason it is crucial to highlight this acknowledgement is because Byron writes next: ‘[a]s I accept your compliments, it is but fair I should give equal or greater credit to your objections’ (BLJ II, 90). Murray’s flattery and Byron’s consequent indulgence of his publisher’s requests was a pattern established early on in their relationship and one that Murray repeatedly employed. 14

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The claim that no previous author ever had a relationship with his publisher quite like Murray had with Byron is worth interrogating, particularly as it is a sentiment that has been echoed several times. In September 1885 an article in Harper’s Monthly Magazine described Byron and Murray as having ‘a relation to each other which never probably existed before or since between a poet and his publisher’.48 Well over a century later, Andrew Nicholson’s edition of Murray’s letters is prefaced by a similar claim, that the relationship is ‘unique in the annals of publishing’ (LJM, xvii). In fact, several authors had close relationships with their publishers, Samuel Johnson and Robert Dodsley, Mary Wollstonecraft and Joseph Johnson, and John Clare and John Taylor to name a few. It is not enough to assert that Byron and Murray’s relationship was ‘unique’; if it was, we need to say why. Close collaboration on textual and editorial matters at manuscript and proof stage is common in the history of author/publisher relations. So too is deference to the publisher in terms of the material choices to be made in the production and publication of the book. Regular disagreements and disputes about payment are to be expected. As the first John Murray wrote, it was difficult for publishers dealing with authors who were ‘unacquainted with the business of bookselling [and are] constantly suspicious of every charge which they do not understand’ (SS  I, 26). A certain amount of support for the author beyond what would be expected of a business relationship is not uncommon. Joseph Johnson provided lodgings for Mary Wollstonecraft, and she described him as being both a father and a brother to her. What is certainly unique about Byron and Murray’s relationship is the extent to which Murray (and his premises) became associated with his most famous author in the minds of the reading public and those closest to Byron. For instance, Byron’s friends, family, (and lovers) felt that they could discuss personal matters concerning Byron through correspondence with Murray. There are over 150 letters from Caroline Lamb to Murray in the Murray Archive, and several from Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Some of the poet’s associates disliked the extent to which Murray was involved in Byron’s life. Douglas Kinnaird never got on well with the man he described as ‘the merchant Murray’ and wrote to Byron that ‘this Scotchman considers you his property’.49 In his diary, John Cam Hobhouse records the unfortunate spectacle of a ‘very tipsy’ Murray proclaiming at a dinner party that ‘Moore is a good fellow, but he can’t write – there is no man can like my man’.50 This sense of proprietorship was felt by Byron himself, and for many years he viewed it in a positive way as a type of brand authenticator. 15

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As late as 1819 he writes definitively to Murray, ‘what is not published by you is not written by me’ (BLJ VI, 125). When their relationship began to break down this association caused problems, and Byron would despair of ‘Murray’s well known endeavour to destroy every publication of mine – which don’t pass through his own medium’ (BLJ X, 135). In addition to describing the relationship between Byron and Murray, this book argues that the letters between poet and publisher represent a dialogue that discusses the nature and potential of Byron’s poetic fame. Writing in an era where technological innovation, the rise of periodical literature and pioneering publishing techniques ensured the steady growth of the reading public, Byron shared the opinion of many Romantic writers that an indiscriminating mass of readers was a serious threat to literary immortality. William Wordsworth famously argued that ‘a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind’ and that literature that satisfied ‘a craving for extraordinary incident’, popular literature, was on the ascendency.51 For many authors this heralded a crisis for literature as ‘the most profitable work is no longer that which appeals to the most sophisticated and literary taste’.52 As has been well documented, the solution to this crisis for the typical Romantic author was to react against the overt commercialisation of literature and construct the figure of the author as outside, or above, the concerns of trade. As Lucy Newlyn argues, the ‘defensive nature of Romanticism’s sacralisation of the author – and, more particularly, the poet – may be seen as arising reactively, out of a resistance to the consumerism and anonymity which characterized the publishing world’.53 Byron’s professed distaste for the notion of writing as a profession was expressed during a time when there were more paid, professional writers than ever before. His letters to John Murray illustrate his attempts to come to terms with this paradox. The only thing that is consistent in Byron’s attitude towards writing, publishing, popularity and his readers, is his inconsistency. Even before the publication of the opening cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Byron wrote of the ‘vanity of authorship’ and at the height of his fame declared ‘I do not think publishing at all creditable to either men or women … [I] very often feel ashamed of it’ (BLJ II, 48, 175). He also claimed there was nothing ‘so despicable as a Scribbler’ and three days later described himself as ‘the veriest scribbler on Earth’ (BLJ II, 88, 90). He wrote scathingly of the idea of writing as a profession, ‘I thought that Poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession’, though he 16

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often acted in a more professional manner than his publisher (BLJ VI, 47). The ambivalence towards taking money for his work illustrates the vacillation of his thoughts; prior to leaving England he went to great lengths to ensure that he had ‘never yet received nor wished to receive a farthing’ for his writing, yet as Peter Cochran has shown, he ‘made a total of £3,850’ from his poetry prior to 1816 (BLJ IV, 63).54 Despite the contradictory statements, Byron’s career repeatedly demonstrates his professionalism as a writer – he wrote quickly, was zealous regarding the copying and editing of his works, corresponded regularly with his publisher and for a long time wrote for the public taste. It is a central argument of this book that Byron’s ambivalence towards professional writing and writing popular literature can be illuminated through an understanding of his relationship with John Murray. The first chapter describes the establishment of John Murray’s firm with special emphasis on the publisher’s taking control of the business and the early years of his success. It does so to provide an insight into Murray’s character and business practice and to emphasise the fact that he was already a successful publisher prior to his association with Byron. This opening chapter shows the publisher as an ambitious young man trying to establish himself in a highly competitive business. The second chapter examines English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron’s early expression of anxiety regarding the fear of an overpopulated marketplace. The circumstances surrounding the publication and subsequent success of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage are well known, so the third chapter concentrates on events immediately prior to the publication of the poem in order to fully describe the means by which Byron became Murray’s author. Unsavoury a character though he may be, it demonstrates the central role played by Robert Charles Dallas in Byron’s early career and proves beyond doubt that though he may have exaggerated his role in the success of Childe Harold, he was solely responsible for bringing the poem to John Murray. The chapter also highlights the extent to which, from the first letter he writes to his poet, Murray positions himself as guardian of Byron’s fame. The fourth chapter focuses on the years of Byron’s fame in London, with particular focus on The Giaour. Taking the theme of overpopulation from the second chapter, it investigates the effect of contemporary reviews that castigated Byron as a reckless contributor to the publication of repetitive works. It will illustrate the extent to which Murray’s publishing practices involved Byron in this negative critical reception and discuss the author’s mysterious and temporary termination of their business relationship. The fifth chapter argues for a dramatic and inevitable alteration in the 17

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Fig. 2 John Murray II, by H.W. Pickersgill. John Murray Collection.

relationship and in Byron’s poetry in 1816 on the basis that his separation from Murray necessarily represents a momentous change in the practices of composition, publication and reception that had characterised the poet’s years in London. The chapter documents the protracted fragmentation of their relationship by suggesting that the tensions which led to the ultimate break between Byron and Murray were evident as early as 1816, when Byron’s sense of alienation and isolation from England were exacerbated by Murray’s infrequent correspondence. The concluding chapter describes the final and acrimonious disintegration of the relationship. Byron’s dissatisfaction had been mounting due to his perception of Murray’s negligent correspondence, which had the simultaneous effect of Byron becoming more distant from his publisher. 18

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Fig. 3 Emma O’Connell, Byron, after Thomas Phillips, 2009 pen, ink and acrylic. Private Collection. By kind permission of the artist.

This was partly because Byron came to believe that Murray was relating not just his own opinions, but those of his ‘cursed puritanical committee’ (BLJ VI, 99). This belief resulted in the lessening of Murray’s influence and led to Byron giving more heed to the opinions of others. Byron began to seriously resent the notion that Murray felt a degree of ownership over his poetry. Murray’s acting as proprietor of Byron’s works was one of the major difficulties between them as it often made the publisher feel entitled to safeguard Byron’s popularity by removing sections of his poetry. The chapter investigates the various roles played by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Douglas Kinnaird and John Cam Hobhouse in the final breakdown of Byron and Murray’s relationship. The circumstances surrounding the composition and publication of Don Juan will also be 19

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discussed. Murray has often been wrongfully blamed for discouraging Byron from writing Don Juan. In fact, Murray was delighted by the opening cantos of the poem, and wrote to Byron that he ‘need attempt nothing further for immortality’ (LJM, 280). Hobhouse was far more alarmed by the poem and his letter to Byron on the subject seriously discouraged the poet. Murray’s decision not to acknowledge himself as publisher was partly based on his fear of prosecution; it is quite probable that it was also part of his marketing strategy for the poem, which was built around presenting it as a mysterious and enigmatic work. Byron was deeply hurt and offended by what he felt was a final rejection, and also by Murray’s repeated attempts to make Byron alter the poem to increase its appeal. The publisher’s argument was that it was foolish to impede the poem’s circulation by refusing to revise it carried little weight with Byron; the latter cantos of Don Juan were entrusted to John Hunt. Notes 1 Parts of this introduction appeared in Mary O’Connell, ‘“[T]he natural antipathy of author & bookseller”: Byron and John Murray’, The Byron Journal, vol. 41, no. 2 (2013) pp. 159–172. 2 See letter from Hobhouse to Byron, 4 August 1814. Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, ed. Peter W. Graham (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984) p. 132. 3 Henry Curwen, The History of Booksellers, The Old and the New (London: Chatto and Windus, 1873) p. 32. 4 James Eli Adams describes the ways in which Tonson and Dryden’s relationship demonstrates ‘the conflict between the moral and material dimensions of authorship’. See ‘The Economies of Authorship: Imagination and Trade in Johnson’s Dryden’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 30, no. 3 (Summer, 1990) p. 467. 5 For a detailed account of the distinction between the terms, see Terry Belanger, ‘From Bookseller to Publisher: Changes in the London Book Trade, 1750–1850’ in Bookselling and Book Buying: Aspects of the Nineteenth Century British and North American Book Trade, ed. Richard G. Landon (Chicago: American Library Association, 1978) pp. 7–16. 6 Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers (London: Bell & Daldy, 1865) pp. v, vi. 7 See particularly William St Clair’s The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For a fascinating account of John Taylor, publisher to Keats, see Tim Chilcott, A Publisher and His Circle, The Life and Work of John Taylor, Keats’s Publisher (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). 8 Zachary Lesser, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p. 10. 9 Alistair McCleery, ‘The Return of the Publisher to Book History: The Case of Allen Lane’, Book History, no. 5 (2002) pp. 161, 163.

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i n t roduc t ion 10 James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade: 1450–1850 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007) p. 208. 11 See letter from Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton, 9 January 1823, The Works of Charles Lamb: To Which are Prefixed, His Letters, and A Sketch of his Life, 2 vols, ed. T.N. Talfourd (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838) vol. 1, p. 207. 12 Thomas Moore, The Journal of Thomas Moore, 6 vols, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983) vol. IV, p. 1669. 13 Oliver Goldsmith, ‘The Distresses of an Hired Writer: Addressed to the Authors of the British Magazine’, The British Magazine (Apr., 1761) p. 1. 14 Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson: The Major Works, ed. Donald Greene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 230. 15 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Pat Rogers and R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 731, pp. 240–241. 16 Ibid., p.  678. 17 Isaac D’Israeli, The Case of Authors Stated, Including the History of Literary Property (1812) in Revolutions in Romantic Literature: An Anthology of Print Culture 1780–1832, ed. Paul Keen (Canada: Broadview Press, 2004) pp. 87–88. 18 Lisa Maruca, The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1660–1760 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) p. 61. 19 Goldsmith, Distresses of an Hired Writer, p. 1. 20 Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, p. 253. 21 Gerald P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979) p. 1. 22 Quoted in Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, p. 274. 23 Raven, The Business of Books, p. 212. 24 Ridgeway has ascertained that Byron has returned from his travels and writes to offer his services as a publisher: ‘Humbly, the desire I feel of becoming your Lordships [sic] publisher, should there appear to your Lordship no impediment, in such an event taking place, I have the honour to be with every Sentiment of Duty and Devotion Your Lordships [sic] Most Humble and Faithful Servant’. Letter from James Ridgeway to Byron, 13 July 1811. JMA, MS. 43504. 25 Jonathan Bate, Review of The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, The Telegraph, 9 August 2007. 26 David Ellis, Review of The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron: The Cambridge Quarterly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 255. 27 Caroline Franklin, Byron: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002) p. 42. 28 Peter Cochran, Review of The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, http://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/letters-of-john-murray3.pdf. Tom Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutics of Intimacy (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) p. 100. 29 Jerome Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) p. 354. 30 Jonathan Cutmore, ‘Introduction’, Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis, ed. Jonathan Cutmore (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007) p. 7. 31 Cutmore, ‘A Plurality of Voices in the Quarterly Review’, Conservatism and the Quarterly Review, pp. 65, 71; Jonathan Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review: A History, 1809–25 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008) pp. 10, 21. 32 Cutmore, ‘A Plurality of Voices in the Quarterly Review’, p. 66.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay 33 Scott, Walter, The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 10 vols, ed. H.J.C. Grierson (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1932) vol. IX, p. 336. 34 There are 171 letters from Murray to Byron in Andrew Nicholson’s edition; Peter Cochran has discovered one additional letter, 17 December 1813 (?), JMA, MS. 43494. The figure of 513 for Byron’s letters includes all those published in Leslie Marchand’s multi-volume edition of Byron’s letters and all those discovered since. I am grateful to Peter Cochran for his assistance with the newly discovered letters. 35 Peter W. Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) pp. 35, 33. 36 Andrew Nicholson calls this anecdote ‘profoundly questionable’ (LJM, xvii) but he gives no reason for doing so, and I see no basis to doubt it. It was reported by Murray’s son, but also by a journalist who had heard it from Murray himself. The story was included in Murray’s obituary in The Illustrated London News of 8 July 1843. JMA, MS. 43054. 37 Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, p. 35. 38 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 144. 39 Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, p. 84. 40 Scott, Letters, vol. IV, p. 365. 41 William Hazlitt, The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, 9 vols, ed. Duncan Wu (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998) vol. 6, p. 189. 42 Quoted in John Strachan, Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) pp. 257–258. 43 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 148. 4 4 Andrew Elfenbein, ‘How to Analyze a Correspondence: The Example of Byron and Murray’, European Romantic Review, vol. 22, no. 3 (Jun., 2011) p. 347. 45 Ibid., p.  348. 46 Ibid., p.  348. 47 Ibid., p.  352. 48 Franz Espinasse, ‘The House of Murray’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, LXXI, ccccxxiv (Sept., 1885) p. 514. 49 JMA, MS. 43455. Also quoted in LJM, 124. 50 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, 28 April 1818. All quotations from Hobhouse’s diary are taken from Peter Cochran’s edition, which is available online at http:// petercochran.wordpress.com/hobhouses-diary/ and are cited henceforth as Diary of John Cam Hobhouse. 51 William Wordsworth, ‘Essay Supplementary to the Preface’, The Major Works, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 667. 52 Lee Erickson, The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialisation of Publishing, 1800–1810 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 15. 53 Lucy Newlyn, Reading, Writing and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 14. 54 Peter Cochran, ‘Did Byron take Money for his Work?’ The Byron Journal, no. 31 (2003) p. 76.

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ch a p ter one

John Murray I and II john murray i and ii The publishing firm of John Murray would never have existed if the first John Murray had enjoyed military life. Born on 1 January 1745 to Robert McMurray and Jean Ross, John McMurray (as he was then) attended Edinburgh University and in 1762 joined the Royal Marines.1 He did not enjoy his time there, principally because he wanted to be a writer and also because ‘the monotony of the life to a young man of an active and energetic temperament became almost intolerable’ (SS I, 2–3). In 1763 he married Nancy Weemss and retired from the navy on half pay. He left Chatham, where he had been quartered, to move to Edinburgh. McMurray found work at Gordonstoun Estate and stayed there for over a year before returning to Edinburgh in October 1765. Under pressure from his wife and her father (who refused to release her dowry of £700 until McMurray found regular employment), he returned to Chatham and was reinstated in the navy. In November of 1767 McMurray wrote a short novel, a fictional romance entitled The History of Sir Launcelot Edgevile, which was published in instalments in the Court Miscellany. McMurray wished he ‘possessed a scribbling turn’ but his future was to lie in publishing.2 He was thirty-one years old, and with no prior experience in the trade, McMurray decided to become a bookseller. His initial reasoning for moving into the bookselling business would not have pointed to the fact that he was about to (as Charles Knight put it) inaugurate ‘the gradual rise of a great monarchy’.3 McMurray conjectured that as ‘[m]any Blockheads in the trade are making fortunes’, he had a fair chance of success.4 Although the literary marketplace was expanding, the publishing business in the late eighteenth century was restricted, anti-competitive and monopolistic in its practice. It was also dominated by a series of powerful London firms, with the notable exception of the great Scottish publisher Archibald Constable. In his memoirs, John Almon declared that ‘a man had better make his son a tinker, than a printer or bookseller’, and in his London Tradesman Richard Campbell offered a grim view of the situation for a prospective 23

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newcomer to the trade: ‘I apprehend the Trade in general overstocked; so that considering the Expence [sic] necessary to make a real understanding Bookseller, and the Stock requisite to set him up, I cannot find much Encouragement for a Parent to design his Son to this business’.5 Further reading of Campbell’s text reveals that his motivation in giving such advice was his profound distaste for unscrupulous booksellers: Authors are generally poor and perhaps know not where to get a Dinner without disposing of their Work, and therefore are necessitated to comply with hard Terms, and put up with the ungentleman-like Treatment of the purse-proud Title-page Monger. This is the case with the ignorant part of the Trade, which is unhappily the greatest number of them …6

If McMurray had attempted to establish a new business, the conditions Campbell outlined would almost certainly have made his venture into publishing a short one. Instead, he bought an existing business, acquiring the premises and stock of William Sandby for £1,000, made up of his wife’s dowry and a loan from a friend. After taking possession of the premises at Fleet Street, McMurray dropped the prefix from his name and set up business under the name John Murray. The London booksellers were hostile towards members of the Scottish trade invading their territory so the anglicising of his name by dropping what one friend called the ‘wild Highland ‘Mac’ may have been Murray’s attempt to conceal an obvious indication of his heritage (SS I, 7). Murray’s biographer William Zachs tells us that ‘there was an adventurous side to his character’ and compares him to Tobias Smollet’s character Roderick Random.7 He had what Zachs calls a ‘disputatious nature’, he frequently visited prostitutes and drank heavily.8 One example from his diary illustrates the matter: ‘Drank six bottles wine, which it seems intoxicated me uncommonly. At twelve o’clock I went away in a chair, but broke from it in Essex street & ran after some girls in Crampton Court’. This reckless behaviour never manifested itself in his business dealings, which were steady and cautious; while ‘others were making and losing fortunes, he proceeded gradually’.9 John Murray, Bookseller, 32 Fleet Street opened for business on 20 October 1768. The shop was located in the centre of the London book trade and stayed open twelve hours a day, six days a week. On his first day he recorded that his first two customers bought books on credit and the third only bought a few pence worth of stationary. Smiles reports that General Sir Robert Gordon recommended Murray to several comrades in India, which although it ensured new customers, forced the bookseller to give long terms of credit (SS I, 8). This put a strain on Murray’s already 24

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limited resources and prevented his taking chances on new publications. It has sometimes been suggested that the first John Murray was not as ambitious as his son; the reality was that the state of his finances often dictated his choice of publication and he was obliged to put practical concerns before ambition. His first major publications were expensive new editions of established works such as Lord Lyttleton’s Dialogues of the Dead and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. In October 1771 his uncle James Ross died and Murray spent the next few years travelling back and forth to Ireland to manage the sale of the estate. His absences (and behaviour during those absences) put great strain on an already tempestuous and somewhat unhappy marriage. Murray had no children with his first wife but fathered a son, Archy, with another woman in 1770.10 In April 1775 he inherited the sum of £2,042 from his share of the estate, which was a substantial boost to his business. In September the following year his wife died of consumption. Murray declared himself devastated by her death and seems to have become dissatisfied with his business, claiming that he was ‘fatigued from morning till night about twopenny matters’ and stating that if he could find ‘a lazy and lucrative office’ he would ‘with alacrity turn [his] shop out of the window’(SS I, 15). Personal matters improved when, on 23 February 1778, he married his first wife’s younger sister, Hester Weemss. Just over nine months later, on 27 November, their first child was born, a boy named John Samuel Murray. Murray’s business expanded steadily throughout the 1770s. In 1773 he published sixteen works, which increased to almost fifty by 1779. Many of his publications were joint ventures; of the thousand titles that bear Murray’s name as publisher, almost forty per cent were published with other booksellers. He formed a partnership and friendship with the radical publisher Joseph Johnson, sharing over 150 titles with him, and together they established themselves as the leading publishers of medical works. Throughout his career Murray demonstrated his keen sense of the market, and was an innovator in certain advertising techniques. After publishing a work on the British peerage in 1790, he sent a handbill to every peer, which, as his biographer notes, was ‘an early example of direct mailing’.11 John Strachan praises Murray’s ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ in this regard.12 Murray was sharply aware of the importance of advertising, describing it as the aspect of the trade ‘least understood in the country’ and that which gave the bookseller most trouble. He frequently spent up to thirty per cent of the total production costs on advertising as he was convinced that ‘when the advertising is at an end so is the sale’. 25

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Defending himself against a ‘complaint … for extravagant advertising’ he claimed that he should be ‘blamed rather for not advertising enough than for advertising too much’.13 He also advised a friend that if ‘you are able to entertain the ladies your business is done’ – a sentiment the second John Murray would share.14 Murray never published the bestseller he dreamed of, building his business on reprints of established works and co-operation with other booksellers. His success was based on the same principle of caution and careful management that he would pass on to his son. One of his most successful ventures was the English Review, which he established to rival the Monthly Review and the Critical Review. Murray employed William Godwin to write political articles and reviews for the journal, but soon became unable to tolerate Godwin’s radical politics. Categorising himself as ‘an illiterate fellow of a bookseller impertinent … to attempt in any shape to control or to dictate in these matters’, Murray wrote to Godwin explaining that ‘I am apprehensive that our Ideas will never meet’ and he could not ‘admit matter foreign to [his] sentiments’.15 As the second John Murray was aware, the establishment of a successful periodical was something that often propelled booksellers to serious influence within the trade. Zachs reports that the English Review gave Murray a regard ‘among authors and among fellow tradesmen’ that was ‘enviable … he gave the public a monthly picture of literature and politics – his picture’.16 In 1782 Murray suffered a paralytic stroke and for a time completely lost the use of his left side. Although he lived for over a decade after, he never fully recovered his health and died after a long illness on 6 November 1793. He was fifty-six and had been in business for twenty-five years. As someone who entered the trade with no prior knowledge, his career demonstrated the veracity of his philosophy: ‘look about you and see who it is that thrives most in the world. It is the industrious and plodding no matter how illiterate and not the abstracted man of sense & learning’.17 As a bookseller Murray was innovative in the marketing of his books, demanded clarity and accessibility from his authors and was not afraid to act as editor to ensure the book reached his high standards. To one author he wrote a letter prophetic of the kind the second John Murray would write to Byron: In going over what is performed you will occasionally observe some small Variations from your modes of expression. This was suggested to me by a few learned Friends who approved of the intrinsic Merit of the performance, but recommended, as indispensably necessary, a little more polish to be made in the style in order to accommodate the Work to the Taste of the Times. The

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joh n m u r r ay i a n d i i alterations made will speak for themselves, & I flatter myself they will have your approbation, when their sole purpose has been to convey your ideas & sentiments to the public, with, if possible, additional force & propriety.18

Murray was exceptionally particular about the typography and material appearance of his works, as indeed he had to be; in an age of increased competition, the bookseller had to use every means possible in order to attract the potential customer. One of his most successful publications was the lavishly produced Essays on Physiognomy by Johann Kaspar Lavater. Murray published this jointly with Joseph Johnson and employed Thomas Holloway as an engraver and Henry Hunter as a translator. The book was an expensive production, including illustrations by William Blake and James Gillray. Murray also seems to have been alert to the means by which the bookseller was emerging as a publisher, someone less concerned with the retail side of the trade than with the commissioning of profitable works and partnerships with successful authors. In a letter to Gilbert Stuart he predicts the rise of the individual publisher at the expense of joint bookselling: It is certain that the public is not fond of seeing many names to a new publication; and for this reason it will be more to the credit & advantage of the author that he dispose of it to a single person. Besides, it is a greater object to one Bookseller, who will naturally interest himself much more in the fate of it than if he enjoyed but a small share of the property … And tho but the simple publisher, he is elated or depressed in the fate of his work, little short of the author himself.19

Murray advocated a place for the publisher next to the author; an arrangement where they would have a mutual interest in the author’s productions. Although he never had an association with a bestselling author like his son would have with Byron, his career was evidence of the means by which a determined bookseller could force his way into the London trade and establish himself as a respected member of his profession. It is clear from the letters of John Murray I that he was delighted with the birth of his first legitimate son. The second John Murray was an affectionate child to whom his parents were so attached that neither of them wanted to send him away to school. Writing to a prospective tutor, Murray wrote that the ‘little fellow has made himself so agreeable, that altho we have hired a man-servant we are nevertheless loth to think of parting with him, altho perhaps it is proper even for his advantage’.20 Murray’s disinclination to part with his son was well founded – the 27

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second John Murray moved school seven times in six years and during this time suffered two serious accidents. Murray knew that it was for the good of his son that his education should commence and sent his ‘innocent and good boy’ to the Reverend John Trusler in 1786, writing that he had ‘at last obtained Mrs M’s consent to part with the little oriental, and I have the less regret in doing it to you, as I rely upon your tenderness & that he will be taught to read & write’.21 Eight years old, Murray spent five months living with Trusler, where he learned to read and write. He was moved to the Reverend William Rutherford’s academy in Uxbridge in September 1787, but was withdrawn after a single term due to a dispute between his father and Rutherford, who had not settled his account for books. Following this he was enrolled in Edinburgh High School but whether as a result of being far from home or the curriculum being too advanced for him, he fell behind the rest of his class to such an extent that his father began to worry about his ability. As the dispute with Rutherford was settled, it was decided that the boy should return to the academy at Uxbridge. He did well at the academy, much to the relief of his father. Sometime in the spring of 1787 young Murray took a severe blow to the head from a brickbat, which resulted in real concern for his health. He developed a serious fever and was very slow to recover completely. Murray and Hester withdrew him from the academy for a second time and sent him to Charles Wells Academy at Margate. This choice was based on location, so the child could take restorative baths. John Murray I was not convinced that the school was ‘the best’ but wrote to Archy that ‘his health leaves no alternative’22. John Murray II spent two years at Margate and made much progress in his studies. A report by his relieved father tells us that: ‘He writes a good hand, is fond of figures, and is coming forward both in Latin and French. Yet, he inherits a spice of indolence, and is a little impatient in his temper. His appearance – open, modest, and manly – is much in his favour’ (SS I, 22). The next school, Dr Burney’s in Gosport, was the site of a terrible accident that left John Murray II blind in his right eye. Murray had brought his exercise book to be examined by his teacher and went to pick up a book that had fallen from the desk. The teacher was holding a penknife at an awkward angle and when the boy stood up the blade ran through his right eye. Already concerned about their son’s health, his father was afraid to tell his wife what happened. Although he was brought to an oculist in London, it was found that the cornea was severely damaged and the eye had lost too much fluid, meaning there was no chance of restoring any sight. Murray never alludes to 28

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his sight, although Byron does occasionally, calling his publisher ‘the Arimaspian Murray’ after the one-eyed people of Scythia (BLJ VIII, 208). Murray’s nephew Robert Cooke would later claim that ‘Mr. Murray could see sharper with one eye than most other people can with two’ (SS I, 32). Murray was not sent back to Dr Burney’s. His father briefly considered sending him to university in Edinburgh but the child’s delicate health dictated the choice of Loughborough House School under the care of Reverend Roberts. There, according to his father’s wishes, Murray learned ‘Latin- French- Arithmetic- Merchants Accounts- Elocution- History- Geography- Geometry- Astronomy- the Globes- Mathematics- Philosophy- Dancing- Martial Exercise’.23 When he had holidays from school Murray would return home and work for his father, transcribing letters and helping in the shop. John Murray II was fifteen years old when his father died. His mother took over the shop for a short time, until she married Henry Paget in September 1795 and moved to Bridgenorth with Murray’s sisters Jane and Mary Anne. The first John Murray’s assistant, Samuel Highley, took over the running of the business, which traded as ‘Murray and Highley’. Murray’s letters to his half-brother Archy reveal his melancholy state at this time, and it is clear from a comment he makes about his guardian finding him ‘an eligible situation’ that it was by no means certain that he would continue in the bookselling trade.24 When he finished his education Murray nevertheless returned to Fleet Street to take his share of the business, which at that stage was focused on selling medical texts.25 His letters of this period are those of a young man who was anxious about his future, lonely without his family and who could not contemplate working with Highley: so unprotected, so patronised, so unadvised, I am so fearful … I will not determine until I can figure to myself the prospect of being contented & constant in whatever I shall hereafter engage in and truly there are objects which I can neither (at present) assimilate nor associate with a connection with Highley – so many disagreeable remembrances crowd upon me that I think myself very unlucky nay often very unhappy & yet I have done less to deserve a better lot than I fear that I have done to deserve a worse … Indeed I wish – my Father was alive.26

The letter books in the Murray Archive show that in the time following the first John Murray’s death, Highley was assiduous in his pursuit of debts due to the firm. The surviving letters from Highley are business correspondence and it is difficult to tell anything about his character. We do know that John Murray disliked him intensely. Smiles attributes 29

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their tense relationship to an incompatibility between Highley’s alleged plodding business practice (his ‘morbid fear of running risks’) and Murray’s energetic ambition (SS I, 30). It is certainly true that Highley preferred to concentrate on bookselling and he maintained the focus on medical texts (he would go on to establish his own business, which also sold medical instruments), but the real reasons for the antipathy are suggested by a letter of 1803, where Murray reveals the source of his antagonism: [Highley] advertises himself as the “successor to the late Mr John Murray” with an intent to make the public believe that I have either retired from the business or am dead – for my father has been dead no less than Ten years and that this wicked insinuation has had this effect I have the letters of two or three persons to prove.27

In the same letter Murray accuses Highley of underselling other booksellers, but it is evident that he was deeply hurt and angry at his partner’s attempt to usurp his position as the successor to the first John Murray. Although Murray continued to work with Highley for a few years, in November 1802 he wrote to propose the dissolution of their partnership. Relations between the men were strained to the extent that Murray suggested that matters should be conducted through a third party ‘in order to prevent unpleasant altercation or unnecessary discussion’ (SS I, 31). The partnership was finally dissolved in March 1803. Smiles reports that the men drew lots for the premises and Murray’s good fortune enabled him to keep the house at 32 Fleet Street. That this story is family legend is strongly indicated by a letter in the Murray Archive of 29 March 1803 where Murray writes that ‘It has cost me so much more than I could well afford to pay, to retain the house of my father that I am not over rich at present’.28 Freed of the man he considered the chief obstacle to his success, Murray’s letters display his relief that he is no longer ‘shackled to a drone of a partner’.29 Even before the partnership was officially dissolved Murray set about trying to secure new authors for his firm. After witnessing a performance of ‘John Bull’ at Covent Garden, Murray wrote to George Colman with a proposal to publish the text. He offered £300 for the copyright. The letter to Colman is an early example of what would become a typical manner of expression for Murray. He distances himself from pecuniary motives and, quoting Henry V, stresses his ambition: I am therefore honestly ambitious that my first appearance before the public

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joh n m u r r ay i a n d i i should be such as will at once stamp my character for respectability. On this account, therefore, I think that your Play would be more advantageous to me than to any other bookseller; and as ‘I am not covetous of Gold,’ I should hope that no trifling consideration will be allowed to prevent my having the honour of being Mr Colman’s publisher.30

Despite making his first approach to a playwright, Murray clearly had ambitions to be the leading medical publisher in London. During his time with Highley he had published one of the most important works of the time, Edward Jenner’s An Inquiry into the Variolae Vaccinae (1798). It was an extravagant production, and one of Murray’s early proposals was to reissue it in a more accessible and affordable format. He reasoned that ‘its size & price preclude it from general circulation’ and volunteered to print at his own cost ‘a large impression in the popular form’. Again, the declared motivation is far from financial; Murray stated that he had ‘considered the cause which I should serve and the honour of being Dr Jenner’s publisher’ rather than his ‘immediate emolument’.31 As the self-described ‘chief publisher of Medical Books in London’, Murray often declined literary works. The future publisher of Byron and Jane Austen wrote to one author in 1803 that ‘poetry very seldom sells to an extent that makes it desirable as a speculation to a Bookseller’ and to another that ‘my plan of business does not allow me to be the publisher of Novels’.32 This decision was based on Murray’s sense of the market at that time. As he explained to one author, ‘at this time I sell no books but such as are upon medical & scientific subjects the threat of invasion and the magnitude of our taxes fill the mind with apprehension and swallow up the sums that have been usually appropriated to literature’.33 As his business increased he became more confident in dealing with authors and did not hesitate to remind them of his knowledge of the trade. When Robert Kinglake, who had completed a dissertation on the treatment of gout, wrote to Murray to suggest an expanded edition of his work, the publisher replied drawing an analogy between his own expertise and that of the physician: whom do you expect to be your Readers? the Purchasers of your former work? should you not then wait until that work is sold? Is it the public in General? Do you suppose then, that the very persons who refused to give their time & Money for one volume, will with less inducement become the Readers & Purchasers of two? For surely your first Book upon this subject had the best chance of success, for it contained not only authenticated cases but had the charm of originality, of novelty … a Bookseller is often to one Author’s mind what a Physician is to our Body – we reason from Facts &

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Experience, & know better than our Patients who have had occasion to attend to them.34

As might be expected, Murray spent a great deal of his time trying to extract payment from overdue accounts. On 2 July 1805 he records writing to twenty people who owed him a combined total of over £1,000. The first few years of business were challenging and there is much evidence from personal letters to suggest that Murray’s health began to suffer. One such letter from his close friend Isaac D’Israeli expresses serious concern and urges Murray to see a doctor. The letter concludes by assuring Murray that ‘your talents and industry want nothing but health to make you yet, what it has always been one of my most gratifying hopes to conceive of you’ (SS I, 54). D’Israeli did not have long to wait. Over the next few years a series of events, ably exploited by Murray, ensured his place as one of the leading London publishers. The first of these was trivial at the time but turned out to be a major turning point in the history of the firm: his taking over of the publication of The Miniature. The Miniature was a collection of essays by students at Eton, the publication of which had run into difficulty due to money owed to the printer. One of the students involved was Stratford Canning, cousin of future Foreign Secretary George Canning. Stratford Canning was to prove a valuable acquaintance for Murray in the establishment of the Quarterly Review. The significance of the event is best described by the publisher himself: Dr Rennell … told me one day that his son and young Canning owed an account for printing the ‘Miniature’, to their publisher, who held a good many unsold copies. I took the stock; paid the account, made waste paper of the numbers; brought out a smart edition which had few buyers; got the reputation of being a clever publisher; was introduced to George Canning, in consequence of the service I had rendered to his cousin; and in a few years set up the Quarterly Review.35

Murray established connections with several booksellers throughout England, Scotland and Ireland, and his approach to business was cautiously optimistic. He was a shrewd publisher and set about expanding his business at a rate that would not jeopardise the financial future of the firm. He described his strict adherence to this practice in a letter of 1807: ‘there are certain principles upon which all my transactions in business are founded from which it is perhaps my misfortune never to depart’.36 It is well documented that the most significant alliance Murray formed during this period was with the Edinburgh firm of 32

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Archibald Constable. The contrast in styles between Murray’s prudence and Constable’s profligacy ensured this association was doomed from the outset. It is likely that Murray’s initial approach to Constable was the first step in a long-term strategy to become associated with Walter Scott. While Murray had been in partnership with Highley he had conducted some business with Constable and in 1803, shortly after he separated from his partner, he wrote to the Scottish publisher asking if he knew of any ‘vigorous young bookseller’ who would be willing to act as his apprentice in London (SS I, 24). Constable obliged and in October 1804 Murray took Charles Hunter as his apprentice. As well as acquiring a trainee bookseller, Murray put himself in the position of offering to do a service for Constable in return. As business became more frequent between the firms, their connections strengthened and less than two years later, following a bitter dispute with Longmans over their handling of the Edinburgh Review, Constable transferred the London publication of his books to Murray. Murray initially tried to heal the ‘deadly breach’ between Constable and Longmans, citing the difficulty of maintaining a long-distance business relationship and reminding both parties that things ‘that would not have been spoken, or perhaps even thought of in conversation, are stated and horribly magnified upon paper’ (SS I, 63). He travelled to Scotland to reinforce his association with Constable and celebrated accordingly. Constable recalled ‘seven of us drinking thirty-one bottles of red champagne, besides Burgundy, three bottles of madeira’ and reported that while ‘Murray contrived to take his share … he has since paid for it very dearly’.37 Murray’s trips to Edinburgh also had a personal motivation. He met his future wife, Anne Elliot, daughter of the printer Charles Elliot, and they married on 6 March 1807. The correspondence between Murray and Anne shows them to have enjoyed a happy marriage, and he was clearly a devoted husband. Shortly after his honeymoon he wrote to Constable of his happiness, stating that ‘Neither my wife nor I have any disposition for company or going out’. Constable was pleased for his associate, writing to Hunter that Murray ‘is a most fortunate fellow, and very deserving of it all’ (SS I, 75). One of the chief benefits of the connection with Constable was Murray’s acquisition of a share in the publication of Scott’s Marmion. Nevertheless, as Smiles describes it, ‘a little cloud … grew and grew until it threw a dark shadow over the friendship of Constable and Murray’ (SS I, 80). This ‘little cloud’ was Constable’s practice of drawing money from Murray in the form of promissory notes and bills. The sums were considerable, at one stage amounting to almost £10,000. Naturally 33

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cautious, and warned by his banker that this could not continue, Murray wrote several times to Constable, reminding him that such ‘behaviour does not appear … to be reconcilable either with friendship or business’ (SS I, 82–83). The relationship between Murray and Constable became increasingly stressed. While visiting Edinburgh, Murray wrote to his wife that he had been received by Constable with ‘evident coldness’.38 Their association eventually ended with Constable establishing his own shop in London. Murray’s own business was growing steadily and he was establishing himself as a prominent publisher. This was due in no small part to the publication of a highly successful cookbook by Maria Rundell. Rundell was a family friend of the Murrays and in 1805 she sent the publisher a collection of recipes and medical remedies she had prepared for her married daughters. Murray had the work edited, added engravings, and called it A New System of Domestic Cookery. Published in 1806, the book was a blockbuster in terms of sales; Murray routinely sold up to 10,000 copies each year and by the early 1840s the book was in its sixty-fifth edition.39 As the firm was on a stable financial footing Murray began to think about ways to expand it and to achieve greater influence. His plan was to rival the Edinburgh Review with the publication of his own journal. The history of the establishment of the Quarterly Review is a long and complicated one and has been expertly negotiated by Jonathan Cutmore.40 The survival of many hundreds of documents relating to the initial planning of the review, and the involvement of so many people, makes it a daunting task to offer even a brief history of the initial stages of the publication of what Murray regarded as his single greatest accomplishment. It is important to be clear on the original motivation for the Quarterly as Murray’s position as publisher of the review, which William Hazlitt described as ‘a receptacle for all the scum and sediment of all the prejudice, bigotry, ill-will, ignorance, and rancour, afloat in the kingdom’, sits uneasily with his position as Byron’s publisher.41 It is less surprising when we accept that Murray’s politicising of the Quarterly was largely commercially motivated, and that he spent much of his time attempting to ‘mute the journal’s political voice’.42 In the time Murray had acted as Constable’s agent in London he saw the sales figures and influence of the Scottish journal. The Edinburgh Review was launched in October 1802, founded by the English clergyman Sydney Smith and a group of young Scottish lawyers including Henry Brougham, Francis Horner and the future editor Francis Jeffrey. The founding members of the review have been described as ‘a galaxy of talent … unrivalled in 34

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periodical publication’.43 From the outset, the review made it clear that it was breaking away from what was almost the established journal practice of noticing a broad range of books and including substantial extracts from them. The purpose of this was to appeal to a wide audience and it also served the more commercial purpose of inducing people to purchase books. The preface to the Edinburgh declared that it would narrow its focus to works it considered intellectual and worthy of attention. Marilyn Butler has described the editorial practice of the review as ‘disciplined Whiggism’, the tone of the preface as ‘brash’, and cited the arrogance of the journal as the single defining characteristic accounting for its supremacy amongst periodicals.44 Walter Scott recognised the appeal of the review and the manner by which it distinguished itself from its predecessors. He claimed that prior to the Edinburgh, reviews had become extremely mawkish; and unless when prompted by the malice of the bookseller or reviewer, gave a dawdling, maudlin sort of applause to everything that reached even mediocrity. The Edinburgh folks squeezed into their sauce plenty of acid, and were popular from novelty as well as from merit.45

The review quickly became known for a ‘seductively readable style of “slashing” criticism’, and perhaps inevitably the journal pushed this controversial style too far; the breaking point came in 1808 with the publication of the infamous ‘Don Cevallos’ article.46 Written by Jeffery and Brougham, the article was fiercely democratic in tone and unapologetically castigated British foreign policy. The review finally outraged public opinion, particularly that of many influential Tories. The genesis of the Quarterly Review lies in the developing discontent towards the Edinburgh and also offers a parallel with Byron’s first serious attempt at writing. Around the time Byron planned an assault on the Edinburgh with his first satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Murray (as well as a significant number of leading authors and critics) were growing dissatisfied with the scathing abuse routinely to be found in the Scottish journal. Byron was not alone in his vendetta against ‘Judge’ Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. Murray’s realisation that the review held a monopoly in the journal market, and his consequent determination to launch a new periodical to rival its dominance, is indicative of his acute judgement in commercial matters and also of his ability to discern and capitalise on the discontentment amongst sections of the literary establishment. The Edinburgh was so influential that it was effectively without any serious opposition and the tone of its articles, coupled with 35

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frequently aggressive Whig politics, had created resentment among certain authors. It also created the opportunity to launch a rival journal. In 1807 Murray had written to George Canning, a leader of a liberal faction within the Tory party, regarding the Edinburgh: The principles of this work are, however, so radically bad that I have been led to consider the effect that such sentiments, so generally diffused, are likely to produce, and to think that some means equally popular ought to be adopted to counteract their dangerous tendency. (SS I, 93)

While little progress was made on the new review for almost a year, Murray took advantage of circumstances early in 1808 to begin preparations for his journal. He began by exploiting the ill feeling between the Edinburgh reviewers and Walter Scott. After reading a severe review of ‘Marmion’ in the Edinburgh, Murray realised that ‘Walter Scott has feelings both as a gentleman and as a Tory, which these people must now have wounded. The alliance between him and the whole clique of the Edinburgh Review, the proprietor included, is shaken’.47 Scott had been deeply affronted by the article and Murray, who ‘never wasted an opportunity from lack of decision’, lost no time in travelling to Scotland to meet Scott and discuss the possibility of a new review.48 Murray visited Scott at Abbotsford, and delayed his journey home in order to continue discussions. He wrote to his wife Annie that Scott had asked him to stay and that he was ‘too happy in the opportunity of improving my acquaintance with him not to remain’.49 Scott was impressed with Murray, writing to Gifford that he was ‘a young bookseller of capital and enterprize & who has … good sense and propriety of sentiment’, and to George Ellis that ‘John Murray … has more real knowledge of what concerns his business than any of his brethren’.50 Scott wrote to Murray of the timeliness of their proposal: The last No: of the Edinr. Review has given disgust beyond measure owing to the tone of the article on Cevallos’ Report subscribers are falling off like withered leaves … so that there never was such an opening for a new review.51

Murray’s consummate practicality is evidenced by the fact that while scribbling plans for the Quarterly in his notebook, he wrote that ‘A Review is nothing more than a series of Essays upon subjects in which people are mostly interested’.52 The comment is also revealing of the fact that although the Quarterly was politicised as a Tory rival to the Whig Edinburgh, he was far more concerned with publishing a journal that would have a wide appeal. Describing his prospective audience, he imagined ‘The parson – Soldier – Lawyer – Statesman – Farmer 36

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– Merchant – General Reader – Artist – Man of Letters – Scholar – Scientist’.53 Murray was naturally conservative by temperament but he wanted his review to have a broad readership. The fact that he tried to enlist Leigh Hunt to write for the new review shows that in matters of publishing Murray was chiefly guided by his commercial sense. From the start he advocated a temperate, objective approach with the Quarterly: … without skilful and judicious management we shall totally mistake the road to the accomplishment of the arduous task which we have undertaken, and involve the cause and every individual in not merely defeat, but disgrace … We should do more harm to our cause by an unsuccessful attempt; and the reputation of the Edinburgh Review would be increased inversely to our fruitless opposition … (SS I, 111)

Scott agreed with Murray and hoped the new journal would contain ‘… decent, lively, and reflecting criticism, teaching men not to abuse books, but to read and to judge them’. When William Gifford was appointed to edit the journal, Scott wrote a lengthy letter to the elder poet outlining his notions on how a successful review should conduct its business. The letter is worth quoting at length: The extensive reputation and circulation of the Edinburgh review is chiefly owing to two circumstances. First, that it is entirely uninfluenced by the Booksellers who have contrived to make most of the other reviews mere vehicles for advertising & puffing off their own publications or running down those of their rivals. Secondly the very handsome recompense which the Editor not only holds forth to his regular assistants but actually forces upon those whose rank and fortune make it a matter of indifference to them … From this I deduce two points of doctrine first that the projected work must be considered as independent of all bookselling influence secondly that the contributors must be handsomely recompensed & that it be a rule that each shall accept of the price of his labour.54

Scott’s principle of compulsory remuneration for each contributor would be adhered to by Murray. Here, Cutmore argues that Murray used money ‘strategically, to buy loyalty, to advertise success and to create dependencies … He used money not by threatening to withhold it, but by throwing it at his editor and contributors’.55 This is an unfair portrayal of Murray’s business practice, and one that creates a distorted picture of his behaviour around the time of the establishment of the Quarterly. Murray had many strengths as a publisher. He had a keen sense of the market and knew how best to promote a work. He also had weaknesses. He was, as he has often been described, timid by nature, and he had a pathological aversion to conflict of any kind. He would never ‘throw’ 37

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money at anyone; his generosity to authors and contributors to the review was motivated both by his desire to professionalise the Quarterly (in line with the Edinburgh), and to establish himself as a liberal and respected publisher. Consequently, Murray found himself in a difficult position. New standards meant that authors expected to be paid for their contributions to regular publications like reviews. However, the matter of accepting money for writing was still looked on with a certain degree of distaste. Francis Jeffrey initially wanted the Edinburgh Review to be ‘all gentlemen and no pay’ until Constable persuaded him that every contributor, regardless of their personal circumstances, should be remunerated for their work.56 In the eighteenth century James Ralph described the dilemma facing the professional author: … a man may plead for Money, prescribe or quack for Money, preach and pray for Money, marry for Money, fight for Money, do any thing within the Law for Money, provided the Expedient answers, without any the least Imputation. But if he writes like one inspired from Heaven, and writes for Money, the Man of Touch, in the Right of Midas his great Ancestor, enters his Caveat against him as a Man of Taste; declares the two Provinces to be incompatible; that he who aims at Praise ought to be starved; and that there ought to be so much draw-back upon Character for every Acquisition in Coin.57

Ralph went on to explain that as ‘the Case stands, he [the author] is laugh’d at if poor; if, to avoid that Curse, he endeavours to turn his Wit to Profit, he is branded as a Mercenary’.58 The logic is easily adaptable to the case of the publisher. If Murray had been circumspect with payments he would be branded miserly; the fact that he was liberal leaves him open to characterisation as a ‘svengali’.59 Murray had been in sole charge of his firm for little over four years when he started planning for the Quarterly. He was risking his financial future, frequent trips to Scotland meant extended periods of time away from his family (his first child, John Murray III, was born on 16 April 1808), and the exertion manifested itself in repeated bouts of illness.60 Writing to Annie he stated that ‘I almost fear that you are as happy without me, for I am not so steadily attentive towards you as your kindness and goodness merit’. He complains that he is unable to sleep without her and states that he was ‘in hopes of forming such a system of improved conduct as will render your home in every way more dear to you’. He was also worried what Annie’s family would think about his being so frequently ill: ‘I shall be obliged by your doing away any impression respecting my being an invalid, but do it without appearing 38

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to do it’.61 One of the main sources of stress for Murray was the appointment of William Gifford as editor. In the narrative of Murray’s association with Byron, and indeed of the history of the firm, Gifford is an important figure, although the early relationship between publisher and editor was difficult. The tension between Murray and Gifford emanated from the publisher’s doubt that the editor was able to ‘feel at one instant, and habitually, whatever may gratify public desire and excite public attention and curiosity’ (SS I, 109). His anxiety was increased by Gifford’s physical infirmity and reputation for scathing criticism. Scott shared Murray’s concerns, particularly as Gifford seemed to be under the impression that Scott would assist him in editorial duties. On more than one occasion, Scott voiced his concerns about Gifford’s reliance on him, writing to Murray that ‘according to Mr. Gifford’s view, I should almost have all the trouble of a co-editor’.62 Murray’s acrimonious relationship with Gifford is repeatedly referenced in the publisher’s letters to his wife. He describes how he has ‘been exceedingly harassed today by Mr G’ and imagined that ‘all my misery on the head of the Review is yet to come … I am in perfect misery with him’.63 The editor of the Quarterly was an extremely conservative Tory and made his reputation both as the former editor of The Anti-Jacobin and author of the venomous satires The Baviad (1791) and The Maeviad (1795). The satires are chiefly remembered for ‘the disproportion between Gifford’s invective and its victims’, the Della Cruscan poets.64 Gifford abhorred the affected sentimental style of poets such as Robert Merry, and the bitter diatribes that form the basis of the satires were largely responsible for the obliteration of the Della Cruscan school of poetry. In writing these satires Gifford saw his role as a defender of proper poetic practice. Taking the poetry of Merry as his example, Gifford attacked ‘obscurity, vulgarity, vanity, and childishness while defending clarity, elegance, modesty, and manliness’.65 A few lines from The Baviad illustrate the tenor of his work: Weston! Who, slunk from truth’s imperious light, Swells, like a filthy toad, with secret spite, And envying the fair fame he cannot hope, Spits his black venom at the dust of Pope. (ll. 245–248)66

This hostility is a major reason why Gifford was so frequently maligned in his own day and perhaps contributes to his relative neglect even today. As John Strachan explains, his ‘intemperate tone … misogyny, rancorous Toryism and personal spite … has won him few admirers’.67 In an attempt to mitigate the recurrent personal malice that intrudes on 39

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the satires, David E. Goldweber writes that ‘Gifford saw such sharpness as his satiric duty’, and Jonathan Cutmore rightly reminds us that he ‘exercised pedantry where pedantry is a virtue, in his classics translations and his careful editions of playwrights’.68 Gifford certainly saw himself as a modern-day Juvenal, a characterisation with which Byron agreed unreservedly. Although Byron admired both Gifford’s satires, he would have been more familiar with the popular translation of Juvenal that appeared in 1802. The preface to this work is somewhat of a memoir; Gifford detailed the multitude of hardships and struggles he had faced throughout his life and his eventual rise to literary prominence. Born at Ashburton around 1757, his parents died before he was ten and he was left destitute. A small and physically infirm child, Gifford was taken in by a local shoemaker and worked for many years as a ploughboy, a clearly unsuitable occupation. His own descriptions of his efforts at self-improvement illustrate his suffering: I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one: pen, ink, and paper, therefore … were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach, as a crown and sceptre … I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl.69

Gifford was eventually rescued by a local surgeon, who sent him to Oxford. His story is certainly one of triumph over adversity and it is hard not to be moved by his account; it was even admired by Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt (who loathed Gifford). Throughout his career Byron never made a secret of his high regard for Gifford as a poet and critic, regarding him as his ‘literary father’ and himself as the ‘prodigal Son’ (BLJ XI, 117). Byron described Gifford as the ‘first Satirist of the day’ and, with Francis Jeffrey, one of the two ‘monarch-makers in poetry and prose’ (BLJ II, 78; BLJ III, 209). Murray’s strained relationship with Gifford contributed to the overall anxiety surrounding the establishment of the Quarterly. The interested parties felt they were involved in what Scott described as ‘an alliance offensive and defensive with young John Murray of Fleet Street’; however, the last thing the publisher wanted to do was to wage war with the Edinburgh.70 Murray certainly harnessed the discontent directed towards the Scottish review and was perceptive enough to see the advantage of connections to the government, but he did not want the new review to be overtly political in tone. His oft-quoted comment that, once fixed ‘upon public attention, honnied drops of party sentiment may be delicately insinuated into the unsuspecting ear’ is less an indication of 40

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his desire to turn the Quarterly into a publication that would ‘poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame [and] pervert literature from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity’ than it is of his desire to tone down the political voice of the journal. Murray felt that the ‘sprightly pages’ of the Edinburgh would be difficult to emulate, but he did not want the review to descend to a language which Scott felt had become too general – ‘the language of vituperative criticism’.71 It is likely that Murray’s apprehension regarding Gifford was precisely as Smiles describes it, a concern that a satiric minded and aggressive editor would engage in conflict with the Edinburgh. Murray’s strategy for the Quarterly was to publish ‘the best information, the best science, the best literature; and leave the public to decide for themselves’ (SS I, 183). The publisher’s close monitoring of Gifford was not welcomed by the editor, who did not hesitate to inform Murray that although he felt he was ‘liberal, generous, and friendly’, he lacked ‘a forthright mind’.72 Murray replied in a letter that gives a good insight into his state of mind around this time and his hopes for his business: If I am over-anxious, it is because I have let my hopes of fame as a bookseller rest upon the establishment and celebrity of this journal. My character, as well with my professional brethren as with the public, is at stake upon it; for I would not be thought silly by the one, or a mere spectator by the other … I neither eat, drink, nor sleep upon anything else. I would rather it excelled all other Journals and I gained nothing by it, than gain £300 a year by it without trouble if it were thought inferior to any other. This, Sir, is true. (SS I, 185)

Murray would eventually gain considerably more than £300 a year from the Quarterly. It had an uncertain beginning and acquired a reputation for late publication, but by 1819 he was printing 12,000 copies and made approximately £4,800 each year from sales.73 Robert Southey, a regular contributor to the review, described Murray as ‘a happy fellow, living in the light of his own glory. The Review is the greatest of all works, and it is all his own creation; he prints 10,000, and fifty times 10,000 read its contents, in the East and in the West’ (SS I, 204). In describing Murray’s dealings with Byron, particularly in instances when it looks like the publisher is neglecting the author, it is important to remember that the Quarterly occupied most of his time. Murray’s association with Byron benefited him and his firm in countless ways but Smiles was not exaggerating when he wrote that the Quarterly Review was ‘the most important enterprise of Mr Murray’s life, to which he gave the principle portion of his time, and in the success of which he took the greatest pride’ (SS I, 204). 41

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Notes 1 For a detailed account of the life of the first John Murray, see William Zachs’s outstanding biography of the publisher: The First John Murray and the Late Eighteenth Century Book Trade: With a Checklist of his Publications (London: Oxford University Press, 1998). My brief account of the first John Murray is indebted to Zachs’s work and to Murray’s Letter Books, which are held in the John Murray Archive. 2 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 16. 3 Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, p. 267. 4 John Murray I to William Falconer, 16 October 1768. JMA, MS. 41896. 5 John Almon, The Memoirs of a Late Eminent Bookseller (London, 1790) p. 36; Richard Campbell, The London Tradesman, Being an historical account of all the trade, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practiced in the cities of London and Westminster (London, 1757) p. 135. 6 Campbell, The London Tradesman, pp. 128–129. 7 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 8. 8 Ibid., p. 13. 9 Ibid., p. 29. 10 The Murray Archive contains several documents relating to Archibald Murray, including many personal letters. We do not know the identity of Archy’s mother, although Zachs suggests that it may have been Hester Weemss, Murray’s sisterin-law and eventual second wife. Hester certainly remained close to Archy and retained strong links with his family, although John Murray II writes in 1813 to repair an ‘unnecessary & unnatural estrangement’. John Murray III recorded that Archy was ‘in continual intercourse with the family, & in after life a trusted adviser to his brother’ (see Zachs, p. 139). When Archy Murray was stationed in Leghorn on the HMS Rochfort he visited Byron twice at Pisa. Byron wrote to John Murray on 23 September 1822: ‘I have seen your brother. – who – I must say – by no means loses in the comparison – I like him very much’ (BLJ IX, 212–213). Archy liked Byron too; his letters to his half-brother on the subject are quoted in LJM, 451–452. 11 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 43. 12 Strachan, Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period, p. 254. 13 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 86. 14 JMA, MS. 41904. 15 John Murray I to William Godwin, 30 November 1786. JMA, MS. 41905. 16 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 216. 17 Letter of 16 September 1769. JMA, MS. 41897. 18 Letter of 10 August 1781. JMA, MS. 41903. 19 John Murray I to Gilbert Stuart, 25 September 1775. JMA, MS. 41900. 20 John Murray I to Rev. John Trusler, 29 March 1786. JMA, MS. 41905. 21 JMA, MS. 41905. Trusler was the recipient of a famous letter from William Blake in which the artist informed him that ‘What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care.’ Trusler had commissioned Blake to produce a series of engravings but was unhappy with the result. See William Blake: Complete Poetry and Prose, ed. David V. Erdman (New York and London: Doubleday, 1988) p. 702.

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joh n m u r r ay i a n d i i 22 Zachs, The First John Murray, p. 150. 23 John Murray I to Rev. Roberts, 30 July 1793. JMA, MS. 41906. 24 Murray’s guardian was his father’s friend Archibald Paxton. John Murray I to Archy Murray, 21 April 1795. JMA, MS. 43025. 25 One of Murray and Highley’s publications would have been of interest to Byron’s mother: Timothy Sheldrake’s A Practical Essay on the club-foot, and other distortions in the legs and feet of children, intended to show under what circumstances they are curable, or otherwise; with thirty-one cases and the specification of the patient (London: Murray, 1798). 26 John Murray II to Archy Murray, 30 July 1800. JMA, MS. 43025. 27 John Murray II to Dr Graves, 3 December 1803. JMA, MS. 41908. 28 John Murray II to Rev. Mr Cartwright, 29 March 1803. JMA, MS. 41908. 29 John Murray II to George Colman, March 1803. JMA, MS. 41908. 30 John Murray II to George Colman, March 1803. JMA, MS. 41908 31 John Murray II to Dr Ring, 23 August 1803. JMA, MS. 41908. 32 John Murray II to Rev. John Bidlake, 25 April 1803, John Murray to Mary Pilkington, 11 May 1807. JMA, MS. 41908. 33 John Murray II to Rev. John Bidlake, 5 August 1803. JMA, MS. 41908. 34 John Murray II to Robert Kinglake, 22 November, 1805. JMA, MS. 41908. 35 Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, p. 8. 36 John Murray II to Martin Keene, 21 August 1807. JMA, MS. 41908. 37 Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents: A Memorial by His Son, Thomas Constable, vol. 1. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1873) p. 81. Smiles’s account of this affair is amusing: ‘Those have been called the days of heroic drinking. Intemperance prevailed to an enormous extent. It was a time of greater licentiousness, perhaps, in all the capitals of Europe, and this northern one among the rest, than had been known for a long period. Men of the best education and social position drank like the Scandinavian barbarians of olden times. Taverndrinking, now almost unknown among the educated and professional classes of Edinburgh, was then carried by all ranks to a dreadful excess’ (SS I, 70–71). 38 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 17 September 1808. JMA, MS. 43023. 39 Murray’s relationship with Mrs Rundell eventually broke down over her accusations that he was neglecting the book. Several letters prove that the manuscript was given as a gift to the publisher and when the publication became successful Murray gave the author £150. Writing to his wife in September 1808, Murray reports that he received ‘the most complete & handsome acknowledgement of my liberality with the assurance that she had given me the Domestic Cookery as a mark of regard to a man whom she esteemed her friend’ ( JMA, MS. 43023). Rundell subsequently charged Murray with issuing a shoddy publication, citing mistakes in the second edition and in 1821 obtained an injunction preventing him from publishing a new edition. She offered a revised edition to Longmans. Murray retaliated by obtaining his own injunction and the matter was eventually settled by the author accepting over £2,000 in return for her relinquishing all rights to the book. 40 See Cutmore, Conservatism and the Quarterly Review, and idem, Contributors to the Quarterly Review. 41 Hazlitt, Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, vol. I, p. 366. 42 Cutmore, ‘A Plurality of Voices in the Quarterly Review’, p. 63. 43 Joanne Shattock, ‘Spheres of Influence: The Quarterlies and Their Readers’, The

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 10, Literature and Its Audience, I Special Number (1980) p. 100. 4 4 Marilyn Butler, ‘Culture’s Medium: The Role of the Review’, The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Stuart Curran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 131. 45 Scott, The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. II, p. 128. 46 Butler, ‘Culture’s medium’, p. 132. 47 Curwen, History of Booksellers, p. 173. 48 Ibid., p.  173. 49 Letter to Annie Murray, 3 October 1808. JMA, MS. 43023. 50 Scott, Letters, II, pp. 103, 120. 51 Ibid., p. 126. 52 See transcription of relevant sections of Murray’s notebook in ‘The Quarterly Review Archive’, ed. Jonathan Cutmore. http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/qr/index.html 53 Quoted in ‘A Plurality of Voices in the Quarterly Review’, p. 73. 54 Scott, Letters, vol. II, pp. 102–103. 55 Cutmore, Conservatism and the Quarterly Review, p. 10. 56 Joanne Shattock, Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the Early Victorian Age (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989) p. 5. 57 James Ralph, The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade, Stated. With Regard to Booksellers, the Stage, and the Public. No Matter by Whom (London, 1758) p. 58. 58 Ibid., p.  58. 59 Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, p. 21. 60 John and Annie Murray had seven children, John (16 April 1808–2 April 1892), Charles (21 November 1809–12 December 1809), Christina (2 June 1811–16 March 1877 – Christina’s twin brother died at birth), Hester (15 November 1813–25 August 1890), Maria (13 August 1818–3 January 1895) and William (born and died May 1821, exact dates unknown). 61 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 26 July 1809. JMA, MS. 43023. 62 Scott, Letters, vol. II, p. 125. 63 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 1 August 1809. JMA, MS. 43023. 64 Thomas B. Gilmore, ‘The Politics of Eighteenth-Century Satire’, PMLA, vol. 86, no. 2 (Mar., 1971) p. 277. 65 David E. Goldweber, ‘Byron and Gifford’, Keats-Shelley Review, no. 12 (1998) p. 105. 66 William Gifford, The Baviad, A Paraphrastic Imitation of the First Satire of Persius (London, 1791) p. 37. 67 John Strachan, ed., Parodies of the Romantic Age, Volume 2: Collected Verse Parody (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999) p. 39. 68 Goldweber, ‘Byron and Gifford’, p. 107; Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, p. 45. 69 See Keen, Revolutions in Romantic Literature, p. 522. See also Roy Benjamin Clark, William Gifford, Tory Satirist, Critic, and Editor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930) p. 81. 70 Scott, Letters, vol. II, p. 153. 71 John Murray II to Walter Scott, 15 November 1808, Conservatism and the Quarterly Review, p. 32; Scott, Letters, vol. II, p. 128. 72 Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, p. 76. 73 Ibid., p.  75.

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ch a p ter t wo

‘Lord Byron turns pro’1 ‘lord byron turns pro’ Byron’s correspondence throughout the composition and publication of his early works reveals the ambivalence towards writing and publishing which would characterise his literary career and his relationship with John Murray. The poet’s first recorded letter to a publisher is to Ben Crosby, written 21 July 1807. It is the first example of what would become a frequent type of communication from Byron to his publishers. He sends a manuscript, gives free permission to the publisher or his editors to alter or amend it as they see fit, and suggests that if it is not good enough it should be thrown in the fire. Byron would later give Murray permission to burn the manuscripts of The Bride of Abydos, Manfred and Don Juan. That statements of this kind were affectations hardly needs stating. Alongside the romantic verses and classical imitations that constitute Byron’s first attempts at poetry there are several satires which are indicative of this inconsistency and gesture towards the half-comic, half-satiric voice of his later works. Early verses such as ‘A Parody upon “The Little Grey Man” in Lewis’ Tales of Wonder’ (1806), where Byron describes himself as ‘a Dealer in Rhyme’ and suggests his ‘merit consisted in being a Lord’, are the first examples of a dismissive attitude that approaches trivialising his poetry. This indifference to the role of a scribbler co-existed with a zeal for favourable public reception and critical praise. ‘Soliloquy’, along with ‘To a Knot of Ungenerous Critics’, formed part of Byron’s response to the local criticism of his volume of juvenile verse, Fugitive Pieces. The basis for ‘Soliloquy’ was a poem by George Lyttleton in which the beautiful speaker, Flavia, laments her residence away from town, reasoning that as no one of note can see her beauty, it is useless: What worth have all the charms our pride can boast If all in envious solitude are lost? Where none admire ‘tis useless to excel; Where none are beaux ‘tis vain to be a belle: Beauty like wit to judges should be shown;

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Both most are valu’d where they best are known … The Town, the Court, is Beauty’s proper sphere: That is our heav’n, and we are angels there.2

Byron’s poem is a witty imitation of Lyttleton’s, replacing Flavia with a ‘hapless Rhymer’ who bemoans the prudish sensibility of his readers and his lack of any truly discerning critics in the countryside: Ah what avails it thus to waste my time, To roll in Epic, or to rave in Rhyme? What worth is some few partial readers’ praise, If ancient Virgins croaking censures raise? Where few attend, ‘tis useless to indite; Where few can read, ‘tis folly sure to write; Where none but girls and striplings dare admire, And Critics rise in every country Squire – But yet this last my candid Muse admits, When Peers are Poets, Squires may well be Wits. (ll. 7–16)

Byron’s speaker goes on to reprimand critics such as the Reverend John Thomas Becher, who disapproved of the morals of his poetry (‘Declaring with a coxcomb’s native air, / The moral’s shocking, though the rhymes are fair’ (ll. 43–44)), and those who merely ‘join[ed] the herd to Sense and Truth unknown’ (l. 55) in condemning his verse as dissipated: ‘What though, she said, for one light heedless line, / That Wilmot’s verse was far more pure than mine! (ll. 31–32). The poem shows Byron responding to criticism of his work; it also implies dissatisfaction with his rural audience and the dearth of sophisticated critics. The shift between Hours of Idleness and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers might well be described as a move from rural to urban, both in terms of its thematic concerns and the poet engaging with a commercial literary marketplace. It is well known that Byron’s attitude towards the fame he achieved by writing and publishing was somewhat Janus-faced, even though his poetry brought him the renown he craved from an early age. Aged sixteen, he wrote that: … the way to riches to Greatness lies before me, I can, I will cut myself a path through the world or perish in the attempt. others have begun life with nothing and ended Greatly. And shall I who have a competent if not a large fortune, remain idle, No, I will carve myself the passage to Grandeur … (BLJ I, 49)

Similar to the speaker in Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Byron had no intention of leaving the world ‘to Fortune and to Fame 46

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unknown’ (l. 118). Byron’s ‘Soliloquy’ echoes the Elegy as it laments the failure of those residing in the countryside to realise their potential. Gray struggles with the notion that ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air’ (ll. 55–156) as Byron laments his lack of urbane readers and critics. The poet’s fervour to promote his works in London is further indicative of his desire to move towards metropolitan culture and a greater source of readers. Byron’s first volume, Fugitive Pieces, was privately printed in November 1806 by John Ridge of Newark. The author described the poems as ‘published merely for the perusal of a friendly Circle’, although he clearly derived a great deal of satisfaction from seeing them in print (BLJ I, 103). Many of the poems are lively and erotic, and as a whole the volume was evidently influenced by Thomas Moore’s pseudonymously published poems of Thomas Little. In a study of the relationship between Moore and Byron, Jeffrey Vail has described how the preface to Fugitive Pieces deliberately echoes the preface to Little’s poems with their ‘playfully mischievous attitude toward love, sex, and romantic self-expression’.3 Byron’s readers were quick to detect the similarity and he was pleased to be pronounced ‘a most profligate sinner, in short a “young Moore”’ (BLJ I, 103). Byron capitalised on the association by demanding that an early edition of his first published volume ‘be printed & bound in the same manner, & in the same coloured Boards as Little’ (BLJ I, 137). Years later, Moore himself saw that Byron had ‘early persuad[ed] himself that to be profligate is to be manly’, and this is one of the primary characteristics of his earliest verse.4 It was not surprising then that the volume should cause discontentment amongst various members of society in Southwell, particularly those families whose daughters were the subjects of the poems. ‘To Mary’ caused particular offence for what was perceived as its overt erotic tones. One of those most offended was the aforementioned Reverend Becher, somewhat of a mentor to Byron. Byron had provided him with a presentation copy of the volume, but Becher strongly disapproved of the poems and advised their immediate suppression. Byron protested against the objection, but the same day he received Becher’s letter of reproach he recalled all the printed copies and burned them; only four survived. Despite having destroyed his first printed volume, he was not entirely discouraged and it was recast as Poems on Various Occasions. Typically, Byron professed that his poetic endeavours resulted from ‘want of better employment’ and that ‘Poetic fame is by no means the “acme of my wishes”’, although he also wrote 47

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in the same letter that ‘Contrary to my former Intention, I am now preparing a volume for the Public at large’ (BLJ I, 112). This next volume, the first to be published, was Hours of Idleness. Hours of Idleness is remembered primarily for prompting the famous scathing review by Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh and consequently ‘the eruption of Byron’s genius’.5 The poems in the volume have been dealt with at length by (amongst others) Jerome McGann and Jerome Christensen, who both identify the highly self-conscious verses as significant precursors to the assured myth making of the later works.6 Conventional, often derivative and frequently indulgent, the poems are important in that they display Byron’s attempts to present himself as an authoritative figure and use his work to shape a sense of self. The dominant motif throughout Hours of Idleness is fame, particularly the conflict between its tangible rewards and essentially transient nature. This is especially evident in ‘A Fragment’ from 1803: When, to their airy hall, my fathers’ voice, Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, pois’d upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain’s side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur’d urns, To mark the spot where earth to earth returns: No lengthen’d scroll, no praise encumber’d stone; My epitaph shall be, my name alone: If that with honour fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay; That, only that, shall single out the spot, By that remember’d, or with that forgot. (CPW I, 37)

With this poem Byron reminds the reader of his aristocratic ancestors and portrays himself as part of a noble lineage. His spirit imaginatively joins those of his fathers in the mountains, evidently a reference to his youth in Scotland, and McGann argues for this as a representation of the enduring over the temporary as ‘these suffer neither decay nor change … by becoming part of them he avoids the necessity of seeking after vain worldly achievements’.7 The poem references urns, scrolls and stones, which will inevitably decay and erode the material presence of Byron’s name. These images are precursors to the more finely poised moment in Don Juan where Byron recognises that the transcendent nature of fame is built on things which, by their nature, must wear away, such as ‘a certain portion of uncertain paper’ (I.218). The majority of Byron’s early work is ultimately anachronistic because, as McGann emphasises ‘he is 48

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imprisoned by a set of decaying heroic symbols and by a society which is totally out of place in his mythologized existence’.8 Byron wrote during a period where literary fame began to be linked with commercial success. As I have suggested earlier, in many ways his correspondence with Murray is an attempt to come to terms with this fact. Byron’s letters to Murray were characterised by the poet’s protestations of contempt towards writing, or ‘the trade’, and towards authors receiving payment for their work. Even before his association with Murray, Byron was engaged with his publishers and paid special attention to the printing, publication and promotion of his work. An example of Byron’s professionalism lurking under the mask of derision is found in his destruction of almost every copy of Fugitive Pieces. Susceptible to praise or censure from his friends, on Becher’s advice, Byron destroyed almost every printed copy of his first volume. It is likely that there were other reasons for this act besides a reaction to Becher’s criticism; Byron knew very well that several of the poems were ‘improper for the perusal of Ladies’ and he may have been worried that he had taken the confessional tone of the volume too far (BLJ I, 97). Another plausible reason, as suggested by Peter Cochran, is that on examination of the volume, Byron was embarrassed at its inferior production and careless presentation.9 The book is full of misprints, and appears amateurish and hastily produced. The extreme care with which Byron proof read and organised his second volume supports the theory that his willingness to destroy the first edition was at least partially due to its unprofessional appearance. Byron’s behaviour during the publication of Hours of Idleness demonstrates his enjoyment of his newfound status as a published author – despite some protestations to the contrary. Writing to Elizabeth Pigot shortly after publication in June 1807, Byron was anxious to hear of the fate of his work in Southwell: ‘Write soon, has Ridge sold well? or do the Ancients demur? what Ladies have bought?’ (BLJ I, 125). Byron had travelled to London to meet with Ben Crosby, the bookseller who distributed Ridge’s volumes. Reporting back to Elizabeth Pigot, he describes how the poems had been distributed amongst the London taverns and coffee houses – a common method of advertising (BLJ I, 126). Byron was determined to ensure the success of the volume and Marchand suggests that this tactic may have been proposed by the poet himself.10 Byron was forthright in his dealings with Crosby; he sent the bookseller a review of Wordsworth for his periodical, and, delighted with the approbation of his metropolitan audience, wrote to Southwell that ‘a Man whose works are praised by Reviewers, admired 49

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by Duchesses, & sold by every Bookseller of the Metropolis, does not dedicate much consideration to rustic Readers’ (BLJ I, 130). He even went so far as to claim surprise at an admiring review that appeared in the July edition of Monthly Literary Recreations even though he knew perfectly well that, being managed and published by Crosby, the review was far from impartial. The sycophantic tenor of the review, claiming that the author’s ‘beauties grow on the soil of genius’ should also have been a clue to any reader as to its bias.11 We can infer from Byron’s letters and his dealings with Crosby that he involved himself heavily in the distribution and promotion of his first published volume. He was clearly concerned that the book should sell well and disliked the fact that some papers and reviews began to publish extracts from his work. He wrote to Ridge that ‘[t]he thing is of no consequence to me, except that I dislike it, but it is to you and as publisher you should put a stop to it’ (BLJ I, 144). From conversations with Crosby, he also began to acquire knowledge of the marketplace: ‘Crosby says the circulation will be still more extensive in the Winter, the Summer Season being very bad for a sale, as most people are absent from London …’ (BLJ I, 132). He also reacted to the differing opinions in the reviews: I have been praised to the Skies in the Critical Review, and abused equally in another publication, so much the Better they tell me, for the sale of the Book, it keeps up controversy and prevents it being forgotten … I bear it like a philosopher … (BLJ I, 136)

Byron’s philosophical approach to the negative criticism was the result, as he hints, of appeasement by his bookseller. The overwhelmingly negative review of Hours of Idleness by Henry Brougham that appeared in the Edinburgh has tended to obscure the fact that, on the whole, the volume was fairly well received by most other reviewers.12 The generally favourable reception probably contributed to the shock of the Edinburgh when it finally appeared. Byron had been forewarned that a negative review was imminent; however, he was distraught at the level of criticism when the review was published. McGann has praised Brougham’s ‘delightfully urbane acidity’, and he is certainly correct in claiming that Byron deserved to be castigated for the ingratiating preface to his first volume of poetry.13 In attempting to ‘arrest the arm of censure’, Byron had offered a multitude of excuses for his verse, including the admission that they were written ‘during the disadvantages of illness’ and ‘depression of spirits’ (CPW I, 32–34). He also offered what were to become staple excuses throughout his career, 50

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claiming that poetry was not his ‘primary vocation’ and that the volume was his ‘first, and last attempt’ at writing (CPW I, 32–34). The fact that the author’s personality is practically forced on the reader throughout the volume was noted by most reviewers. Consequently, when the book was criticised, it was often personal criticism. The Eclectic Review was unapologetic in this regard, stating that ‘[t]he notice we take of this publication, regards the author rather than the book’ (RR, B: II, 700). Brougham was no different. As Jerome Christensen observes, Brougham clearly associates poetic strength with originality and therefore he ‘interprets the title page as a defence, the recourse of a marginal aristocrat or a weak poet’.14 Emphasising the quintessentially Romantic doctrine of originality, Brougham advised Byron that his poetry would benefit from the inclusion of ‘at least one thought, either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed’ (RR, B: II, 834). The review was caustic, asserting that the poems belonged to ‘the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit’ and that Byron’s ‘effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant water’ (RR, B: II, 834). Brougham was a liberal writer and spiteful though the review certainly is, it is significant in that it attacks not only Byron, but also, by implication, the notion of the ‘aristocratic writer’, which increasingly had no place in the new commercial age of literature. The tone of the review might be unpleasant, but there is critical discernment in Brougham’s attack, which concentrates on the insincerity of Byron’s verse and his flagrant attempt to guard against criticism. Brougham was acting as a spokesman for the literary ideals of the Edinburgh and although the review is overtly personal and at least in part politically motivated, it represents the most important review of Byron’s early poetry. The leading review of the day informed Byron in no uncertain terms that the patronage system was dead and he would be better off forgetting about a career as a poet: He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his family and ancestors – sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us of Dr Johnson’s saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this consideration only, that induces us to give Lord Byron’s poems a place in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account. (RR, B: II, 833–834)

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If Byron had sought critical approbation as a form of validation for his early work based on his nobility, Brougham left him in no doubt that the new form of approbation came from critics who, in writing for a periodical journal, were responding to a new reading public. Byron was shocked that he had been treated so harshly by a Scottish Whig periodical and was devastated by the review. He described himself as ‘cut to atoms’, and as the review had ‘completely demolished [his] little fabric of fame’ he was ‘as miserable in mind and Body as Literary abuse’ could make him (BLJ I, 158–160). A letter from his mother corroborates this reaction: he abuses himself worse than the Edin[bu]r[gh] Reviewers, he says if I have any regard for him I never will mention his poetry to him more … as a man he has done with it forever … he is really discouraged and depressed … that odious Review has convinced him that he really has no Talents.15

The story of what happened next is well known. Instead of succumbing to depression, Byron wrote English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in order to exact vengeance on the Edinburgh, and the scope of his anger took in the vast majority of the literary establishment. Much later, writing to Murray about John Keats’ death, Byron described how: … a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author – and the one on me – (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down – but I got up again. – Instead of bursting a blood-vessel – I drank three bottles of Claret – and began an answer. (BLJ VIII, 102)

Byron himself claimed that Hours of Idleness was his first and last volume; one of the chief problems with this is that it provides the basis for critics and biographers to assume that the negative review of Hours of Idleness was what prompted Byron to write his satire. Byron has given us plenty of evidence to support such a theory, for example the letter to Murray cited above, and particularly the preface to Hints from Horace: Two years have passed and many countries have been traversed since circumstance converted me into a satirist. If my first volume of Rhyme had been suffered to pass quickly into mental obscurity, I would have quickly passed along with it. But a [Mr Jeffrey] celebrated Editor would be witty … it became necessary for me to convince these persons how very easy it is to say ill-natured things and to sell it also. (CPW I, 428)

Here, Byron explicitly gives credit to the Edinburgh for motivating him to write. He had obviously forgotten the ‘214 pages of a novel, one poem of 380 Lines, 560 Lines of Bosworth Field, and 250 Lines of another 52

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poem in rhyme, besides half a dozen smaller pieces’ he told Elizabeth Pigot he had written since the publication of Hours of Idleness (BLJ I, 136). Significantly, the 380 lines were part of poem called British Bards, which was the foundation for English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. British Bards was the original title of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a poem Byron intended as a satire on contemporary poetry. McGann states that this poem was begun in London around October 1807 (CPW I, 393). We do not have a version of the early poem but there is enough evidence to speculate on the contents of the original draft. We know from Byron himself that at least 380 lines were written before he saw Brougham’s review, and Moore tells us that the original first line of these 380 lines was ‘Time was ere yet in these degenerate days’.16 It is clear from the opening lines that Byron’s original intention was to ally himself with Alexander Pope, John Dryden and particularly William Gifford in order to wage war on contemporary literary society. The extensive revisions and additions to the poem retain this theme; however, it is expanded in such a way as to place the conflict between critics and authors, specifically Scottish critics and English authors, at its core. Expanded to include the periodical journalists after the stinging review, when the first draft was ready in February 1808, Robert Charles Dallas, a distant relation and self-appointed literary agent offered it to Longmans publishers. Their refusal cost them the opportunity to publish Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage years later. Eventually, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was accepted by James Cawthorn. The first edition of 1,000 copies published in March of that year sold out quickly. As he was to do later with The Giaour, Byron added to the poem and four subsequent editions, all of greater length, came soon after. Claude Fuess describes the poem well as a ‘kind of inverted Dunciad; the novice falls upon the masters of his day, as the Augustan master upon the nonentities of his’.17 Fuess recognises Byron’s audacity in assuming a position whereby he pronounces judgement on a contemporary literary society he believes to be inherently corrupt. In this regard Juvenal was an important model and there are obvious echoes of the Roman satirist throughout the poem.18 Indeed, the first lines of the revised text, ‘Still must I hear? – shall hoarse FITZGERALD bawl / His creaking couplets in a tavern hall, / And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch Reviews / Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my Muse? (ll. 1–4), are a loose translation of the opening of Juvenal’s first satire: ‘Must I be always a listener only, never hit back, / although so often assailed by the hoarse Theséid of Codrus?’19 As Frederick Beaty 53

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suggests, these echoes of Juvenal ‘were meant to link Byron with … the scourge of decadent society and literature’.20 Steven E. Jones writes on the importance of recognising that the translation of Juvenal with which Byron would have been most familiar with was Gifford’s: ‘Byron’s Juvenal is always in part William Gifford’s Juvenal, because the larger cultural phenomenon of Gifford’s mediation to the English reading public shaped Byron’s understanding of his own role as a satirist’.21 Byron was deliberately styling himself as a modern-day Juvenal, or more likely another Gifford: a poet intent on crushing the degenerate literary society around him. The fact that Byron chose a version of Juvenal ‘mediated’ by Gifford is important, as is the influence of the satirist Charles Churchill. As Peter Manning has shown, ‘Byron could no longer rely on his readers’ recognition of classical allusion’, therefore the allusions to Gifford and Churchill modernise the poem and make it less reliant on its original satiric model.22 Byron’s prefatory justifications of his motives in writing are less ingratiating than those for Hours of Idleness; as Caroline Franklin states, the modesty may still be false but it is much better managed.23 Throughout the poem Byron assumes the role of a wounded and indignant reader protesting against the flood of substandard texts. Immediately he places himself in a position of moral superiority; he is not putting himself forward as a solution to the problem, he is merely identifying the problem for others to see: ‘my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better’ (CPW I, 228). The preface introduces the imagery most prevalent throughout the poem, that of the writer as prostitute, which is of course reminiscent of Grub Street: But the unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten: perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. (CPW I, 228)

The standard metaphor of disease is also employed; in lamenting the absence of a ‘regular physician’, Byron describes himself as a ‘country practitioner’ who ‘prescribe[s] his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic’ (CPW I, 228). The notion of an epidemic is particularly apt for his poem as it frequently resorts to listing off numerous literary offenders. Some, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge are recognisable to us, others, such as Amos Cottle, less so. William H. Marshall calls this ‘overemphasis of the multiplicity of bad bards and reviewers’ a ‘symptom of collapse’ and the chief reason why the poem 54

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is a failure.24 Byron’s tactic of naming a stream of writers (he lists over 100 individual names in the poem), in addition to the constant images of flooding, overcrowding and excess, suggest that the poem might be profitably read as an expression of anxiety regarding the rise of the marketplace. Byron offers a vision of the literary marketplace that is bleak and corrupt, as though it were written a century earlier in response to Grub Street. Throughout his career, Byron’s estimation of the majority of his contemporary authors was low. Prior to the composition of English Bards he excluded living English poets from a reading list since he felt there were ‘none who will not survive their productions’, and declared that ‘[t]aste is over with us, & another century, will sweep our Empire, our literature, & our name from all, but a place in the annals of mankind’ (CMP, 3). The fact that in reading the poem today the modern reader fails to recognise the majority of poets surely proves Byron’s point. Highlighting this aspect of the poem suggests its affinity to Pope. In arguing for the importance of Juvenal, Gifford and Churchill as models for the poem, it must be remembered that Pope was one of the chief influences on Byron at this stage of his career. Byron’s regard for Pope was part of his unapologetic commitment to the models of the neo-classical era. Bernard Beatty contends that we cannot understand Byron unless we understand his relation to the eighteenth century, and his allegiance to Pope in particular is an integral element of English Bards. As Beatty argues, ‘he was often decisively out of step with what ‘Romantics’ ought to think and do. How could a ‘Romantic’ say that ‘this is the Age of the Decline of English Poetry’ and blame this degeneration on the ‘absurd and systematic deprecation of Pope’.25 Despite McGann’s assertion that Byron ‘really had no intense satiric quarrel with his age’, Byron was clearly concerned with the state of English poetry, and blamed Wordsworth and the Lake poets for taking literature down the wrong path (CPW I, 398). This is the reason why Byron began a poem that would ‘venture o’er / The path which Pope and Gifford trod before’ (ll. 93–94). The poet felt that contemporary writers had deviated needlessly from what had been a tradition worthy of admiration, and English Bards is both an assault on contemporary writers and a defence of Pope and Dryden and those poets who Byron felt were attempting to uphold their tradition, such as Gifford. Byron’s professing adherence to these traditions while spending many years writing Romantic adventure poetry obviously presents a dilemma. It is a characteristically Byronic idea that classic and Romantic voices could 55

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exist side by side; these modulations can be effectively traced alongside Byron’s relationship with Murray and his readers. It is not sufficient to term English Bards as merely an expression of loyalty to Pope and Gifford, or simply as a means of personal revenge against the Edinburgh. English Bards can be read as a poem that confronts the reality of the marketplace in a manner which had been conspicuously absent from Byron’s earlier verse. This is evident even in the choice of form. That Byron chose to write in heroic couplets is indicative of his admiration of Pope, but it is also the reason why the poem does not compare well on a formal level with The Dunciad or Essay on Criticism, its two most obvious intertexts. Heroic couplets became a dominant form throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century because they were considered the most appropriate and dignified form for addressing serious public or literary issues. A poet writing in couplets ‘indicated the express intention of engaging in extended argumentative discourse, and promised … systematic consideration of important issues’.26 Byron’s choice of the form signalled at once his ambition and his belief that his concerns were significant. Well-written couplets such as those by Pope progress in a rhythmic fashion. Pope tended to write closed couplets that particularly drew attention to their artifice and demanded a level of technical ability that Byron did not possess. As Jonathan Swift wittily acknowledged, Pope was the unrivalled master of this form: ‘In Pope, I cannot read a line / But with a sigh, I wish it mine: When he can in one couplet fix / More sense, than I can do in six’.27 The turbulent progression of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers reflects the portrayal of the frenzied marketplace. Jane Stabler highlights the difference between Byron’s frantic couplets and Pope’s measured lines: ‘Pope controls his readers’ expectations, allowing us to pause and applaud each perfectly achieved couplet. Byron’s iambic pentameter rushes headlong’.28 The difference between Byron’s and Pope’s use of the form also indicates the future path of Byron’s poetry. As couplets ‘never try to deny that they are artful, calculated, rhetorical, and “artificial” even when they strive to be smooth, accessible, colloquial, and conversational’, in retrospect they were never going to suit a poet who at the peak of his career described himself as ‘never straining hard to versify, / I rattle on exactly as I’d talk / With any body in a ride or walk’ (DJ XV, 19).29 While the Ottava Rima of Don Juan is no less calculated or artificial than couplets, the conversational tone pulls the reader continually forward, a style perfectly suited to Byron’s talents. In addition, while Pope is remembered as a polished and technically 56

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gifted poet, Byron’s use of language produced an entirely different effect. This effect was best summarised by Scott, who claimed that the poet’s sometimes casual technique was part of his appeal: Sketches from Lord Byron are more valuable than finished pictures from others; nor are we at all sure that any labour which he might bestow in revisal would not rather efface than refine those outlines of striking and powerful originality which they exhibit when flung rough from the hand of a master.30

In an early admission of technical deficiency Byron states that he does not possess ‘the arrows of satiric song’, and asserts that ‘The royal vices of our age demand / A keener weapon, and a mightier hand’ (ll. 38–40). His targets require more than piercing shots from arrows, they required demolition. If critics pronounced judgement on a text, and readers of the periodical (who were in their thousands) accepted this judgement, then the potential for misinterpretation was infinite. The influence of Pope’s Essay on Criticism is nowhere more apparent than in Byron’s castigation of the literary critic, a portrait surely also influenced by Samuel Johnson’s pompous and mechanical pseudo-critic, Dick Minim:31 A man must serve his time to every trade Save Censure; Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from MILLER, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skilled to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning, call it Attic salt; To JEFFREY go, be silent and discreet, His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet: Fear not to lie, ‘twill seem a sharper hit, Shrink not from blasphemy, ‘twill pass for wit; Care not for feeling – pass you proper jest, And stand a Critic, hated, yet caressed. (ll. 63–74)

Byron’s critic is a mercenary hack, motivated by malice and without any legitimate authority. He is a ‘tyrant’, a ‘usurper[s] on the throne of taste’ (ll. 83–84). His presentation of the author, however, is no more favourable. A key moment in the poem is his attack on authors who receive payment for their work; coincidentally, the avaricious bookseller he names is Murray: Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Let such forego the poet’s sacred name, Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame: Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain! And sadly gaze on Gold they cannot gain! Such be their meed, such still the just reward Of prostituted Muse and hireling bard! (ll. 173–183)

Pope’s influence is also apparent where Byron explicitly refers to the danger of the proliferation of ‘Pseudo-bards’ (l. 137), and particularly in the imagery employed in depicting the saturation of the marketplace: This truth at least let Satire’s self allow, No dearth of Bards can be complained of now: The loaded Press beneath her labour groans, And Printer’s devils shake their weary bones, While SOUTHEY’S Epics cram the creaking shelves, And LITTLE’S Lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves. (ll. 123–128)

The imagery of shelves straining under the weight of unsold books is found repeatedly throughout The Dunciad: ‘where the pictures for the page attone, / And Quarles is sav’d by Beauties not his own. / Here swells the shelf …’32 A more obvious connection with Pope is the notion of a disorganised, chaotic race. The Dunciad describes: Figures ill pair’d, and Similes unlike. She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance; Pleas’d with the madness of the mazy dance: How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race.33

Byron gleefully portrays his own version of Pope’s ‘jumbled race’: Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew, For notice eager, pass in long review: Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace, And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race; Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode; And Tales of Terror jostle on the road; Immeasurable measures move along … (ll. 143–149)

That Byron wishes to illustrate the chaos of an over-populated marketplace is clear. He also turns his attention to the materiality of the text, the excess of paper and the recycling of unsold books as pastry wrappers: ‘Behold ye tarts! One moment spare the text’ (l. 309). In chastising Amos Cottle, a minor Bristol poet, Byron writes: 58

‘l or d by ron t u r ns pro’ Oh, AMOS COTTLE! for a moment think What meagre profits spring from pen and ink! When thus devoted to poetic dreams, Who will peruse thy prostituted reams? Oh! pen perverted! paper misapplied! (ll. 401–405)

Byron suggests that had Cottle been forced ‘to make the paper which he soils’ (l. 408) he would have been more careful with his productions. Immediately prior to this section of the poem, Byron explicitly interprets the notion of the marketplace in its most literal form, uniting the concerns of commercialisation and overpopulation in the image of poetry being sold like fish at a market: ‘… goods to market – all alive! / Lines forty-thousand, Cantos twenty-five! / Fresh fish from Hippocrene! who’ll buy? who’ll buy?’ (ll. 389–391). The satire on Francis Jeffrey and Thomas Moore is at the centre of the poem. Byron mocks Jeffrey for a ridiculous attempt at a duel with Moore, ‘The duel was prevented by the Magistracy; and, on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated’. Highlighting the impotence of the critic is one of Byron’s goals in his satire; he also calls attention to the irony of the fact that a Scottish critic has become the primary evaluator of British poetry: O’er politics and poesy preside, Boast of thy country, and Britannia’s guide! For long as Albion’s heedless sons submit, Or Scottish taste decides on English wit … (ll. 500–503)

The Edinburgh Review was fiercely nationalistic in its tone; as we have seen, Byron had assumed that his Scottish ancestry would preclude criticism. When it failed to do so, Byron set himself up as ‘an English antagonist’.34 As Peter Manning notes, the poem ‘elevates the personal pique of a young poet against an eminent critic into the larger pattern of traditional animosity between the nations’.35 Years later, Moore would try to defend Byron’s ‘abuse with which, in his anger against the Edinburgh Review, he overwhelmed everything Scotch’ as ‘an instance of [a] temporary triumph of wilfulness’.36 While this may have been partially the case, we should not lose sight of the fact that although Byron had personal grievances against Jeffrey, the opposition between author and critic on a general level is what characterises the poem; Byron saw the dominance of reviews like the Edinburgh and the commercialisation of literature as threats to the author function. Despite the occasional moments where Byron allows his animosity to cloud his 59

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judgement, the poem is a call for authority to be restored to the author and taken from the critic, who, by the early nineteenth century, had come to be accepted as a judge of literature and arbiter of taste. Even the title of the poem, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, calls attention to the ambivalent relationship between authors and reviewers. English Bards is wholly disdainful of the commercial author in an era when accepting payment for writing was, if not the norm, then at least far more acceptable than it had been a century earlier. Interestingly, after Byron’s stance as a gentleman poet had been exposed as utterly obsolete by Brougham, despite all its venom towards the marketplace, English Bards shows Byron engaging with contemporary and commercial literature in a way that would have seemed unthinkable from the poet of Hours of Idleness. His energetic satire on writers, critics and booksellers shows an author who is aware of the reality of the conditions of writing in a commercial marketplace and is a long way from the poet of Hours of Idleness, who expected approbation based on his nobility. Although it was written and published prior to Byron’s association with Murray, English Bards represents a sound starting point from which to base an analysis of Byron’s relationship with his publisher because it illustrates the fact that Brougham’s review forced Byron to accept the reality of the literary marketplace and that the author was willing to accept the task. The critical response to English Bards was favourable, although many reviewers disapproved of the seemingly random nature of Byron’s abuse. Although the Eclectic praised the ‘high seasoning of invective and sarcasm [and its] humour and spirited versification’, the reviewer reprimanded the poet on the grounds that [t]here is so little discretion and taste in many of his decisions, such total insensibility to indisputable merit in others, such unmitigated and arrogant reprobation when there was only need for judicious reproof … (RR, B: II, 704)

The March 1809 edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine lauded the poem for uniting ‘much of the judgement of the Essay on Criticism, the playful yet poignant smile and frown of indignation and ridicule of the Dunciad, with the versification of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, and the acuteness of the Imitations from Horace’. The Critical Review also noted the similarity to Pope and praised the manner by which Byron ‘checked’ the tide of contemporary literature: It would be much for the advantage of literature that every ten or twenty

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‘l or d by ron t u r ns pro’ years should produce a new Dunciad to expose the ravings of folly, the coxcombry of learning, and the aberrations of genius. (RR, B: II, 607)

The poem sold well, a fact that pleased Byron as he had anticipated that satire ‘from its topics, must be temporary, and of course be successful at first, or not at all’ (BLJ II, 53). He could not have predicted its enduring popularity. Cawthorn printed four editions with Byron’s consent. By the time of the fifth edition, the author had made friends with many of those he had attacked in the poem (most notably Lord Holland), and he decided to suppress it. He later told Samuel Taylor Coleridge that the poem was ‘written when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side ever since’ (BLJ IV, 286). This did not prevent Cawthorn from publishing spurious editions for many years after. William St Clair estimates that upwards of 20,000 illegitimate copies were produced. Demand for the poem never ceased throughout Byron’s lifetime.37 A survey of contemporary criticism of Byron’s later works reveals that reviewers often referred to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In light of Byron’s later career, it seemed appropriate to stress the fact that he began his literary life ‘in contention: a state of obligatory reciprocity between the aristocratic poet and the self-confirmed arbiters of culture’.38 Bemused at the endurance of a work he wished to suppress, Byron exasperatedly wrote to Cawthorn that he could not ‘conceive how the devil a temporary subject of that kind should be still sought after – unless it is the perversity of people – who want a thing because they can’t have it’ (BLJ IV, 221). Throughout his years with Murray, Byron deeply regretted having written his satire. It was emblematic of a previous self, a satirical poet who had defied the literary establishment. As his relationship with Murray began to falter, Byron wrote to his publisher that he would write another English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In his elegy for Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote of the reviewers ‘whose wings rain contagion’, and the effect that Byron’s satire had on them: … how they fled, When like Apollo, from his golden bow, The Pythian of the age one arrow sped And smiled! – The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.39

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was a poem Byron could never leave behind him. 61

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Peter Graham identifies English Bards as a significant turning point in Byron’s career, the moment when ‘Lord Byron turns pro’.40 Advising his friend and aspiring author John Cam Hobhouse, around the time of the publication of English Bards, Byron warned him about the price of the book. He wrote ‘praying him to abate three and sixpence in the price of his next book’ the reason being that ‘half a guinea is a price not to be given for anything save an opera ticket’ (BLJ II, 19). This advice was perceptive on Byron’s part. Based on the estimates of standard weekly incomes offered by St Clair, a new book would be a costly purchase for the majority of the population. Hobhouse’s Miscellany cost 10½ shillings; it was, as Byron had predicted, overpriced. James Cawthorn had charged 5 shillings for English Bards; the Miscellany was always likely to fail in a competitive marketplace where the majority of books being sold were cheaply reprinted eighteenth-century classics. As St Clair reflects: ‘For six shillings you could buy an evening with Peacock’s Headlong Hall or a month with Richardson’s Clarissa’.41 Byron’s knowledge that the price of the book dictated the potential reader proved significant in his dealings with Murray. For instance, if he cautioned Hobhouse that 10 shillings was an unreasonable price to ask of the public, what did he think of Murray charging 50 shillings for the first edition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage? When the Miscellany failed to sell, Byron was quick to blame the prohibitive cost. He was also astute in attributing the failure of the volume to ‘the dead-weight of extraneous productions with which [Hobhouse] loaded [his] Pegasus’ (BLJ II, 45). His advice to his friend was succinct and characteristically practical: ‘Now what would I do? Cut away the lumber … of your contributory friends, castrate that Boccacian tale, expunge the … preface … add some smart things of your own, change the title, and charge only seven & sixpence’ (BLJ II, 45). Such attention to the practical matters of ensuring a book’s success was to become typical of Byron, although it is worth highlighting the shifting nature of his attitude depending on who he was addressing. When writing to Hobhouse, Byron was quite prepared to satisfy his literary urges, eagerly proposing a journal and readily admitting to his partiality for writing: have you no literary projects in hand? Can’t you & Mathieu, & some of our wits, commence some literary journal, political, critical or what not? I dont [sic] mean however like a common magazine or review, but some respectable novelty, which I recommend & leave to your own brilliant considerations. – You see my scribbling propensities though ‘expelled with a fork’ are coming on again. (BLJ II, 43)

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However, when writing to his sister Augusta, he assumed a casual role of indifference verging on disdain: Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, & what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, & what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; – all this comes of Authorship, but now I am in for it, & shall be at war with Grubstreet, till I find some better amusement. (BLJ II, 88)

As we will see in the next chapter, the reality was that Byron was not so much concerned with finding a better amusement than he was with finding a better publisher. Shaped by the attitude to booksellers advocated by Pope and Swift, contemptuous of the paid writer, anxious for public and critical validation and having written a poem lambasting contemporary literary society, Byron was about to meet John Murray. Notes 1 Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, p. 30. 2 Baron George Lyttleton, Extracts from Lord Lyttleton’s poetical works: viz. Soliloquy of a Beauty. Progress of Love … (Manchester, 1795) pp. 3–4. 3 Jeffrey Vail, The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) p. 15. 4 Thomas Moore, The Works of Lord Byron, with His Letters and Journals, and his Life, 17 vols (London: John Murray, 1832) vol. 1, p. 120. 5 Jerome J. McGann, Fiery Dust (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1968) p. 4. 6 See especially Jerome McGann, Fiery Dust and Jerome Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength. 7 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 16. 8 Ibid., p. 18. 9 See Peter Cochran’s edition of Fugitive Pieces at http://www.internationalbyronsociety.org/images/stories/pdf_files/fugitive_pieces.pdf. As Cochran writes, ‘Confessing that a book is rude raises a smile among your friends: confessing that it is incompetently printed doesn’t.’ 10 Leslie A.  Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957) vol. 1, p. 134. 11 Monthly Literary Recreations; or, Magazine of General Information and Amusement, no. 3 (Jul., 1807) p. 67–71. 12 For a useful summary of the main reviews see William S. Ward, ‘Byron’s Hours of Idleness and Other than Scotch Reviewers’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 59, no. 8 (Dec., 1944) pp. 547–550. 13 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 4. 14 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 21. 15 Marchand, Byron, vol. 1, p.149. 16 Moore, Life, vol. I, p. 243.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay 17 Claude Fuess, Lord Byron as a Satirist in Verse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1912) p. 50. 18 Mary Clearman, ‘A Blueprint for English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: The First Satire of Juvenal’, Keats-Shelley Journal, no. 19 (1970) pp. 87–99. 19 Juvenal, The Satires, trans. Niall Rudd, ed. William Barr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 3. 20 Frederick L. Beaty, Byron the Satirist (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985) p. 12. 21 Steven E. Jones, ‘Intertextual Influences in Byron’s Juvenalian Satire’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 33, no. 4, (Autumn, 1993) p. 772. 22 Peter J. Manning, ‘Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: The Art of Allusion’, Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin, no. XXI (1970) p. 7. 23 Franklin, Byron: A Literary Life, p. 28. 24 William H.  Marshall, The Structure of Byron’s Major Poems (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962) p. 28. 25 Bernard Beatty, ‘Byron and the Eighteenth Century’, The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. Drummond Bone (Cambridge: University Press, 2004) p. 236. 26 J. Paul Hunter, ‘Couplets and Conversation’, The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry, ed. John Sitter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 16. 27 Jonathan Swift, ‘Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D’, Major Works, ed. Angus Ross and David Woolley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) ll. 47–50, p. 515. 28 Jane Stabler, ‘Second-generation Romantic Poetry I: Hunt, Byron, Moore’, The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, ed. Michael O’Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) p. 494. 29 Hunter, ‘Couplets and Conversation’, p. 25. 30 Moore, Life, vol. III, p. 71. 31 Dick Minim appears in an essay by Johnson entitled ‘How to Become a Critic’ (The Idler, no. 60, 1759). Johnson uses the hapless Minim to illustrate his point that ‘Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense’. Johnson, The Major Works, p. 290. 32 Alexander Pope, The Dunciad in Four Books, ed. Valerie Rumbold (Harlow: Longmans, 2009) Book I, ll. 139–141, pp. 118–119. 33 Ibid., ll. 66–70, p. 107. 34 Beaty, Byron the Satirist, p. 29. 35 Manning, ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: The Art of Allusion’, p. 10. 36 Moore, Life, vol. I, p. 35 37 St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 586. 38 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 19. 39 P.B. Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (New York and London: Norton, 2002) p. 491. 40 Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, p. 30. 41 St Clair, Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 196.

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Janus-Faced: James Cawthorn and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, John Murray and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage janus-faced Byron left England after the publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in order to travel around Europe. In September 1810 he was in Patras, and wrote to John Cam Hobhouse that he was in ‘a very ridiculous situation’. The poet was ‘much debilitated’ and had been ‘vomited and purged’ by Dr Romanelli. Confined to bed, he decided to describe his sufferings in verse through a parody of Pope’s ‘Lines on the Duke of Buckingham’. In a footnote to the letter, Leslie Marchand claims that Byron’s lines ‘surpass those of Pope’. He is right to give Byron this credit as the verse is a genuinely funny, exaggerated portrayal of a foppish poet’s illness. In closing lines reminiscent of Jonathan Swift, Byron imagines the posthumous fate of his works: Odious! in boards, twould any bard provoke, (Were the last words that dying Byron spoke) No let some charming cuts and frontispiece Adorn my volume, and the sale increase, One would not be unpublished when one’s dead And, Hobhouse, let my works be bound in Red. (BLJ II, 15)1

In these lines Byron embraces and parodies the vanities of authorship. It is not surprising that his imagined last thoughts should have turned to his literary career. Although he had claimed prior to leaving England that he had ‘laid down his pen’ and it was Hobhouse who had packed ‘100 pens two gallons Japan Ink, and several vols best blank’, Byron composed three major poems while abroad: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Hints from Horace and The Curse of Minerva (BLJ I, 208). He began the

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composition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in Janina on 31 October 1809; by 28 March the next year, he had finished two cantos. As we have seen, the overall critical reception of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was positive. While he was on his travels, Byron was kept informed of the progress of the poem by Robert Charles Dallas, who was by this stage firmly established as his literary agent. Dallas was born in 1754 in Jamaica and later spent time in America and Europe before settling in England. He was a prolific writer in several genres, producing numerous novels, histories, plays and poetry. Dallas is a fawning, sycophantic character, generally disliked by biographers, but he merits consideration for his role in the publication of Byron’s early works. He first made contact with the poet to praise Hours of Idleness and at the same time claimed a distant familial connection. Marchand claims, probably correctly, that had Byron been ‘less avid of praise for his poems … Dallas was the sort of person whom [he] in other circumstances might readily have pilloried as a dullard’.2 The style of Dallas’s letters is ingratiating and self-important; he flatters Byron in the most obsequious of terms while simultaneously qualifying his praise. His response to an early draft of English Bards (Dallas had suggested the title ‘The Parish Poor of Parnassus’) is typical of his manner: ‘I would tell you that it rivals the Baviad and Maeviad; but, till my praise is of that value, I will not be profuse of it’.3 Dallas acted as an intermediary between Byron and James Cawthorn, and intervened when Byron accused the publisher of neglecting his duties. Dallas’s subsequent publication of a catalogue of half-truths, exaggerations and fabrications in his Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron makes it a difficult task to unravel his precise role in Byron’s early literary career. It is clear that he revelled in his position as literary advisor to the young poet, even going so far as to send lines for insertion into an early draft of English Bards (his offer was tactfully refused). He dealt directly with Cawthorn in Byron’s absence and reported on the sales and reception of the satire. Dallas wrote to Byron that his authorship of the poem was widely known and informed him that ‘it is universally well spoken of, not only among his [Cawthorn’s] own customers, but those of the other booksellers – at Murray’s he heard it extolled with rapture’.4 The story of what happened when Byron arrived home from his travels is well known. Virginia Woolf summarised it as follows: ‘He came home from the East with satires (parodies of Horace) in his bag & Childe Harold. He was persuaded that Childe Harold was the best poem ever written’.5 Her version, like so many versions before and after 66

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is heavily indebted to Dallas’s description of the initial circumstances surrounding the publication of Childe Harold. His account, published in his Recollections, is briefly this: Byron had arrived in London on Sunday 14 July 1811; Dallas (aware that Byron had a manuscript) called on the author the next morning and Byron, telling him he ‘believed satire to be his forte’, gave him Hints from Horace in order that he might supervise the publication.6 Unfortunately, Dallas was ‘grievously disappointed’ with Hints and when he called on Byron the next day expressed his surprise that the poet had not written anything more directly related to his travels.7 Having communicated his dismay that Byron returned from ‘the cloudless skies of Greece’ with only a poem that might have been written ‘in the smoky atmosphere of London’ the poet allegedly gave Dallas the manuscript of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, describing it as ‘stanzas … not worth troubling … with’ as someone had already read them and ‘found very little to commend and much to condemn’.8 Dallas reported Byron’s extreme reluctance to publish Childe Harold and emphasised his role in persuading the author of the merits of the poem. He then set about finding a publisher. His initial thought was to offer it to Cawthorn; however, Dallas describes how Byron thought that his former publisher ‘did ... not rank high among the brethren of the trade’.9 Dallas felt that Byron’s low opinion of Cawthorn was the result of his being influenced by friends in Harrow since his return to England. Apparently Byron instructed Dallas to offer the poem to William Miller; and after Miller refused, Dallas agreed terms for publication with John Murray as they were previously acquainted and he wished to oblige the publisher. In an appendix to his edition of Murray’s letters, Andrew Nicholson systematically discredited Dallas’s account of the events leading to Childe Harold being published by John Murray (LJM, 471–475). Through an examination of letters in the Murray Archive, Nicholson proved that Dallas could not have read Hints from Horace before it was set in proof in October 1811 and that he was not given the manuscript of Childe Harold, but that he asked for it. These assertions are supported by Dallas’s original letters and indeed by Byron’s letters to Hobhouse. In exposing Dallas’s selective version of the truth, Nicholson lists the facts pertinent to the opening of negotiations with Murray, reminding us that the exact manner by which Byron came to be one of Murray’s authors is still uncertain. It is clear that it was Byron and not Dallas who first offered the poem to William Miller. Nicholson suggests that perhaps Byron thought of offering the poem to Murray, or even that 67

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Miller himself recommended his fellow publisher as they were on ‘good terms’.10 Grudgingly, Nicholson concedes that these suppositions do not ‘rule out the possibility that it was indeed Dallas’ (LJM, 473). There are difficulties with the account which make it likely that Nicholson has allowed a shared dislike of Dallas (a man Byron described as ‘a damned nincom’ and Murray later called ‘a swindler’) to influence his account of how Murray became Byron’s publisher (BLJ I, 274; LJM, 472). We need to look at Nicholson’s argument carefully. Firstly, the core of his objection to the idea that it was Dallas who thought of bringing Childe Harold to Murray rests on his belief that Dallas was lying when he wrote: I wished to oblige Mr Murray, who had then a shop opposite St. Dunstan’s church, in Fleet-Street. Both he and his father before him had published for myself. He had expressed to me his regret that I did not carry him the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. But this was after its success – I think he would have refused it in its embryo state.11

In response to this statement Nicholson claimed that ‘Dallas had no reason to “oblige” J[ohn] M[urray]; and except for one work of his, neither JM nor his father before him had published for him. Nor does he appear to have been personally acquainted with JM prior to the negotiations over C[hilde] H[arold’s] P[ilgrimage]’ (LJM, 473). In fact, in addition to the ‘one work’ (Elements of Self-Knowledge, 1802), John Murray’s father had published Dallas’s Short Journey in the West Indies: In which are interspersed, curious anecdotes and characters (1790). While this does not necessarily amount to an acquaintance, a letter in the Murray Archive, which Nicholson describes as ‘a single grumbling letter’, proves more than that Dallas ‘had at least been to 32 Fleet Street’. In this letter Dallas acknowledges receipt of books from John Murray, describes his previous recommendation of a work, and accepts that while he felt neglected by Murray and Highley, ‘the handsome manner’ of their recent conduct had ‘completely compensated … for the former inattention’. He concludes his letter by promising to visit.12 This letter certainly attests to previous association. Furthermore, Nicholson does not mention Byron’s letter to Dallas of 23 June 1810 where he writes ‘you stated something about Murray’s publishing my rhymes all together, including my Satire’ (BLJ I, 248). In light of this evidence I see no reason to doubt Dallas’s account of why he brought the poem to John Murray. We know from Cawthorn’s report that Murray enjoyed English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, although Dallas was surely right to suppose that the admiration might have arisen from ‘the rivalry of the Edinburgh 68

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Review and Quarterly Review’.13 An incremental gathering of circumstances seems to have tilted the balance in favour of Murray as a future publisher. Dallas had published with Murray’s father and with Murray himself. Byron did not want Cawthorn to have Childe Harold and he refused to allow Dallas to take it to Longmans because they had declined English Bards. Byron offered Childe Harold to William Miller, who turned it down because of the attacks on Lord Elgin – Miller was Elgin’s publisher. Dallas’s account of acquiring Childe Harold, convincing a reluctant Byron of its merits and bringing it to Murray is inaccurate on a number of counts: Byron did not give Dallas the poem in the manner he described, Dallas asked Byron for it. Additionally, Dallas did not trust his own judgement on Childe Harold; he brought it to his friend Walter Wright. Wright had worked as British Consul-General in the Ionian Islands and published his reminiscences as a loco-descriptive poem, Horæ Ionicæ, in 1809. This work was praised by Byron in English Bards and again in Childe Harold. In his diary, Henry Crabbe Robinson recalls a conversation with Wright, who had told him he was reading a poem of Byron’s in manuscript, which had been given to him by Dallas. Wright informed Dallas that he had ‘no doubt this will succeed’.14 Dallas added some drama to his narrative by strongly implying that if it were not for him and his methods of persuasion, Childe Harold might never have seen the light of day. This is exaggerated, but the answer to the question of how Byron ended up as one of Murray’s authors is clear – it was because of Dallas. He might have lied about many other things but in this instance he was telling the truth. Byron’s growing distrust and dislike of James Cawthorn is an interesting aspect of his return to England. Cawthorn had managed English Bards well enough and had shown himself to be an able publisher; in the time Byron was abroad, almost four editions of the poem had been sold out. Despite this, Byron was unhappy with the appearance of the third edition, which was printed in a type Cawthorn had rejected as inferior for the second edition. Showing himself quite capable of behaving like the ‘Odious … ‘Twould any bard provoke’ persona he created in Patras, Byron wrote to his publisher that he was not pleased with the new edition being ‘published in a worse form than the 2d … which was more creditable to you & me’, and threatened that if Cawthorn continued to make ‘retrograde movements’ he would look elsewhere (BLJ II, 44). Byron was irritated that he had not received a copy of the new edition of the poem and although Dallas was acting as his agent, he was annoyed that he had not received more direct communication from the publisher: ‘if 69

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the sale is successful it is nothing to you hot-press gentry what becomes of the author … you have not written to give the smallest intimation of it’s [sic] progress, I have heard through other channels that the work goes on tolerably’ (BLJ I, 253). Responding to Byron’s displeasure, Cawthorn wrote ‘I regret exceedingly that I shd be thought negligent of any commands your Lordship might think proper to favour me with’, and having described the sales and reception of English Bards, concluded that Byron might come to think him ‘more entitled to credit for politeness and attention than hitherto’.15 A temporary irritation ensued and on 7 July 1811 Byron wrote to Cawthorn to apologise for falsely accusing him of failing to send parcels, to discuss copying Hints from Horace and to arrange a visit. He informed the publisher that he had written Hints as ‘a kind of Sequel’ to English Bards and that it was ‘his for the risk of printing … it will serve to make a tolerable volume with the other’ (BLJ II, 58). The letters Byron wrote just before he arrived in England make his plans for his literary career clear. He intended Cawthorn to publish Hints in a joint volume with his earlier satire. It is evident from Byron’s letters that while he thought he would continue with Cawthorn as publisher of his satires, he was never going to entrust him with Childe Harold. Dallas was disappointed by this as he felt that ‘instead of looking for fashionable booksellers, he should, as Pope did, have made his bookseller the most fashionable one’.16 Dallas suspected (with some cause) that Byron had been influenced by his friends in respect to his opinion of Cawthorn. Just over two weeks after writing an amicable letter to Cawthorn, Byron wrote to Hobhouse (who was negotiating with the publisher) extolling the virtues of William Miller as ‘Hodgson says he is the only eligible publisher’. Byron also wrote ‘[a]s for C[awthor]n you may rely on it you will have some sneaking conduct before you get from his hands’.17 He advised Hobhouse to ‘recommend to your own judgement the Consideration of your publisher. – Much depends on him’ and concluded the letter by describing Cawthorn as ‘a vendor of lampoons’ (BLJ II, 61). Matters were further complicated by Byron’s absence from London for over a month. The death of his mother on 1 August necessitated his going to Newstead Abbey and during this stressful period he ‘accepted freely what is offered courteously’ – Dallas’ offer to act as mediator between the poet and Murray (BLJ II, 75). Following his agreement to publish Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Murray insisted that Byron’s name should appear on the title page. On 18 August 1811 Dallas wrote to Byron informing him that Murray’s decision on the format of the poem was dependent on the poet’s agreement. Dallas wrote 70

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that Murray ‘begs’ to have Byron’s name on the title page, as the publisher ‘waits for it before he determines on the Quarto or 8vo form’.18 Two days later, on 20 August, Byron wrote to Cawthorn to check on the Hints and discussed the manner in which it should be published, ‘whether single, or at some future period in a joint volume with the Satire’ (BLJ II, 74). Responding to Dallas, Byron replied that he was reluctant to attach his name to Childe Harold and conceded that if Murray was insistent, he would allow it to be titled ‘by “the Author of E[ngli]sh Bards & S[cot]ch R[eviewer]s”’. His hesitancy was due to his fear that the ‘plaguy Satire will bring the North & South Grubstreets down on the “Pilgrimage”’. In the same letter Byron asked Dallas whether Murray had ‘shown the work to anyone’ – adding that ‘he may’ (BLJ II, 75). The months between Byron’s return in July 1811 and the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in March 1812 saw him trying to juggle the publication of two very different poems by two very different publishers. He soon realised that he would have to choose between them. It is not known precisely when Byron and Murray met for the first time although it seems probable that it would have been some time in November 1811, after Byron returned from Newstead. The poet had already written to introduce himself to his new publisher in August. In his first letter to Murray, dated 23 August 1811, Byron’s main concern is to prevent the publisher showing the manuscript of Childe Harold to William Gifford. It was an unreasonable request given that Gifford was Murray’s chief literary advisor, and obviously betrays Byron’s anxiety. He wrote that Gifford was ‘the last man whose censure … I would deprecate by clandestine means’ and that he would rather ‘obtain fairly any little praise [and] not by extortion & the humble solicitation of a bandied about M.S’. As Gifford was the editor of the Quarterly Review, published by Murray, Byron evidently wished to avoid the accusation of making a ‘petition for praise’ (BLJ II, 78). He concluded the letter by offering Murray some short poems and notes to conclude the volume and announced his intention to publish a two-volume edition of selections from English Bards and Hints together with Childe Harold. Murray did not reply to this letter for almost two weeks because he was away from London. Dallas wrote to Byron a few days after the poet sent the letter to Murray expressing his disappointment that the publisher was expected to be absent ‘ten days or a fortnight’.19 Dallas had hoped to make arrangements about Childe Harold but he understood that ‘at this time of the year the Booksellers are not for hastening new works through the press, and when [Murray] returns the Childe may be 71

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Fig. 4 John Murray to Byron, 4 September 1811. JMA, MS. 43494.

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soon brought forth, by urging the able Professor of the Typo-Obstetric art’.20 Murray’s absence from London is noteworthy because he could not have seen Byron’s letter, and the request not to show Childe Harold to Gifford, until his return on the afternoon of 3 September. He does not mention the request in his first letter to Byron. This letter to Byron is worth looking at in some detail as it tells us a great deal about Murray’s character, his manner of dealing with authors and the tactics he would employ to influence his new poet. Murray begins by telling Byron that the poem is superior to anything he had previously published, and in light of its merits, ‘it were therefore grievous indeed, if you do not condescend to bestow upon it, all the improvement of which your Lordships mind is so capable’. Having read the poem, Murray had been worried by some sections, particularly those on Spain and Portugal and, predictably, he was wary of the ‘religious feelings’. In a phrase Byron was to hear many times throughout his association with his publisher, Murray writes that the reason he is asking for the changes to be made is that the expressions in the poem ‘do not harmonize with the general feeling’ and would consequently ‘greatly interfere with [its] popularity’. The ‘religious feelings’ would have to be modified as it might ‘deprive [Murray] of some customers amongst the Orthodox’. He also expresses his desire that Byron should keep his promise to complete the poem by adding two further cantos; an imaginative interpretation of Byron’s letter, which had only promised a few short poems (LJM, 3). Murray is careful to stress that he is asking for changes only in his capacity as a publisher and businessman, a feature which is consistent in all his letters requesting alterations to Byron’s text. It is apparent that although Murray phrases his request in such a way as to make it appear that any changes would be ‘in compassion to [his] publisher’, the intimation is that Byron would endanger his future fame if he failed to comply: it were cruel indeed not to perfect a work which contains so much that is excellent – your Fame my Lord demands it – you are raising a Monument that will outlive your present feelings, and it should therefore be so constructed as to excite no other associations than those of respect and admiration for your Lordships Character and Genius. (LJM, 3)

This moment in Murray’s first letter to Byron inaugurates the consideration of fame and reputation that underpins the correspondence between publisher and poet and which echoes the wider contemporary debate on the subject. Authors including William Hazlitt, Samuel Taylor 74

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Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote of the crucial difference between popularity and fame, between reputation and fame, and between fame and immortality. They described it differently but the distinction is the same, the difference between that which is temporary, ephemeral and fleeting, a ‘wavering phantom’, and that which is permanent, enduring and eternal.21 Countless times throughout his letters, Murray assures Byron that his regard is for his lasting fame, yet he demands the poet put aside his ‘present feelings’ and change his work in order to appeal to popular taste. Contemplating this distinction while defending Don Juan, Byron later wrote to Percy Bysshe Shelley: as long as I wrote the exaggerated nonsense which has corrupted the public taste – they applauded to the very echo – and now that I have really composed within these three or four years some things which should ‘not willingly be let die’ – the whole herd snort and grumble and return to wallow in their mire. (BLJ IX, 161)

Byron writes of his early productions with contempt; he equates ‘nonsense’ with ‘applause’. In the aftermath of the separation scandal and throughout the disapproval of Don Juan, as Byron moved away from Murray, he came to realise that Hazlitt was right in claiming that ‘no applause, however loud and violent, can anticipate or over-rule the judgement of posterity’.22 Murray finished his first letter by gesturing to the fact that his own reputation would become linked to Byron’s: I trust that you will pardon the warmth of this address, when I assure your Lordship that it arises, in the greatest degree, in a sincere regard for your lasting reputation, with, however, some view to that portion of it, which must attend the Publisher of so beautiful a Poem. (LJM, 3–4)

Byron’s reply shows us how receptive he was to flattery; however, while he acquiesced to certain changes, he refused to alter the sentiments: The time seems to be past when (as Dr. Johnson said) a man was certain to “hear the truth from his bookseller”, for you have paid me so many compliments, that, if I was not the veriest scribbler on Earth, I should feel affronted. As I accept your compliments, it is but fair I should give equal or greater credit to your objections … I cannot alter the Sentiments, but if there are any alterations in the structure of the versification you would wish to be made, I will tag rhymes, & turn Stanzas as much as you please. (BLJ II, 91)

Byron’s next letter to Murray was not so cordial. He had found out that Gifford had seen Childe Harold and wrote, frantically, that he ‘hardly 75

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conceived [Murray] would have so hastily thrust my productions into the hands of a stranger’. Replying directly to the publisher’s request for alterations, he consented to whatever changes Murray may wish – unless they were ‘to do with politics or religion’ (BLJ II, 99). It is not clear precisely who gave the poem to Gifford, although it is possible to speculate that it was Dallas, who wrote to Byron that the manuscript had ‘somehow fallen’ into the editor’s hands ‘between the time of Murray’s absence and his return’. Dallas was eager to assure Byron that because it happened ‘unknown’ and ‘contrary to [his] intention’, it ‘removes every idea of courting applause’.23 Byron was not convinced by this argument and reacted furiously. Assuming Murray had ignored his wishes, he described the act of showing the manuscript to Gifford as ‘begging, kneeling, adulating’, wrote of what he termed ‘a bookselling, backshop, Paternoster Row, paltry proceeding’, and (referring to the recent suicide of a bookseller) expressed his wish that Murray had been ‘tied to Payne’s neck when he jumped into the Paddington canal … that is the proper receptacle for publishers’ (BLJ II, 101). Dallas tried to lessen Byron’s anger by pointing out the irrationality of being upset with a publisher receiving a second opinion on a manuscript: … you are a great deal too much alive on the subject of the Poem having been seen by Gifford … You do not yet know the practice of Booksellers who never enter upon printing speculations without consulting an oracle – and that Murray’s should be a Delphic oracle should rather be a cause of pride than of mortification to an author in whose favour it decides. You have no right to be angry with Murray – So far from going to solicit praise, he, as all others do, was only solicitous as to the probability of his expenses being equalled by the produce of the sale – Had Gifford shrugged his shoulders instead of reading many of your stanzas a second time in animated tones, he would perhaps have decided on the octavo size & inferior paper that is all …24

Dallas’s letter is entirely reasonable and reminded Byron that Murray had every right to assess the viability of the publication. This explanation had no effect on Byron, who replied ‘I will be angry with Murray … I would have raised all Fleetstreet, & borrowed the Giant’s staff from St. Dunstan’s church to immolate the betrayer of trust’. He instructed Dallas to continue to ‘amplify’ his ‘wrath’ with the publisher (BLJ II, 105). Byron’s distaste for what he described as a ‘paltry transaction’ was partly due to his belief that because of his extravagant praise of Gifford in English Bards, the editor would feel unable to offer an objective assessment of Childe Harold: ‘what could he say? He could not spit in 76

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the face of one who had praised him in every possible way’ (BLJ II, 101). Dallas reported Gifford’s praise of Byron, ‘of your Satire he spoke highly, but this Poem he pronounces not only the best you have written, but equal to any of the present age’. Gifford’s opinion was relayed to Dallas by Murray, who had begun a tactic that Peter W. Graham describes as ‘way-smoothing’. Capitalising on Byron’s admiration for Gifford would prove vital to the success of Murray’s endeavours. As Graham writes, it was ultimately the solution to the question of how ‘to keep a poet with anti-commercial prejudices, “tempestuous passions”, and liberal Whig sentiments suitable for the list of a conservative publishing house’.25 Following his first letter to Murray, Byron wrote to Cawthorn stating that he was ‘in doubt what to do with the “Hints from Horace”’. He wrote that the reason he wished to delay publication was because he wanted someone with a thorough knowledge of the original Latin to supervise the poem through the press. He also informed Cawthorn that he had ‘another thing in Mr Murray’s hands’ and disliked the idea of ‘firing on the Public with a double Barrell’ (BLJ II, 81). Cawthorn was evidently upset that Byron had another publisher, and Byron wrote again wondering why he ‘should suppose me dissatisfied with you because the other thing is published by Mr Murray’ (BLJ II, 83). The truth was that Byron was extremely reluctant to publish both works close together. He shows an early awareness here of the dangers of being too prolific – something he had satirised in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers but would soon stand accused of by reviewers himself. As he wrote to Dallas, with two such different poems, both in press at the same time, ‘I must be satisfied with a comparison to Janus’ (BLJ II, 101). Following a report of his discussion of the poem with Murray, Dallas replied that he ‘would rather [Byron] did not come forth a Janus, and that the “Hints” should follow at a later period’.26 The absence of much of Murray’s correspondence from this period makes it impossible to state emphatically that he was party to this suggestion, but it is not difficult to speculate that he would have agreed with the temporary suppression of Hints. As he wrote in his first letter to Byron, Murray’s primary concern with Childe Harold was that nothing should interfere with its popularity (and sales). A sequel to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers would fall into this category and impinge on the reputation of Childe Harold. Byron agreed that at the very least, Childe Harold should be published before his satire, but he worried about the reaction from Cawthorn: ‘You are right about the “Hints,” they must not precede the “Romaunt,” but Cawthorn will be savage if they don’t, however keep them back, & him 77

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in good humour if we can, but don’t let him publish”’ (BLJ II, 104). As early as September 1811 Byron had made a definite decision that Hints would not be published before Childe Harold. His correspondence with Dallas over the next few weeks was occupied with keeping Cawthorn from progressing with the poem. Byron wrote to Francis Hodgson in conspiratorial mode, telling him that ‘Cawthorn must keep back the “Hints” as we want the other out first, but don’t let him into that secret lest he be savage’ (BLJ II, 109). While Dallas and Byron kept Cawthorn ‘at a stand still’, Murray was engaged with Childe Harold (BLJ II, 128). Once Murray received the proofs, he sent them to Byron, who returned them, instructing the publisher to send them to Dallas, ‘who understands typographical arrangements much better’. Claiming to ‘care nothing about types or margins’, he informed Murray that the ‘Printer may place the notes in his own way, or any way, so that they are out of my way’ (BLJ II, 100). Dallas, meanwhile, had been arrested for debt. Not wanting Byron to learn of his misfortune, he turned to Murray: ‘I write to you in confidence and depend upon your honour not to mention the circumstances, and particularly not to let Lord B. know anything of it. The fact is, I have been arrested, and I write to beg you to lend me twenty guineas’. Murray obliged, though he wrote in a note recording the payment that it was ‘vexatiously inconvenient’ to him.27 Once his debts had been settled, Dallas moved to Lambeth Road, which he felt was a convenient situation for the supervision of the proofs of Childe Harold, being close to the printer Thomas Davison’s premises. Davison was generally acknowledged as a fine and careful printer, particularly noted for improvements in printing ink. Davison was also famed for his special technique of printing beautifully clear octavo volumes, and was thus a figure of ‘great celebrity’.28 In a letter to Murray he describes how he was ‘never satisfied with the general appearance’ of octavo volumes as it was difficult to get the printing press exactly on the centre of the small form of type. Davison solved this problem by placing two forms instead of one at opposite ends under the press, which produced a clean, even impression.29 The printer’s importance to Murray is evidenced by the fact that out of a total of 184 volumes of poetry produced by the Albemarle establishment between 1812 and 1831, 120 were printed by Davison, and he was the only one of Murray’s printers entrusted with Byron’s works.30 On 4 April 1812 Dallas wrote to Murray regarding the sale of the copyright to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, claiming that after ‘long pondering on the subject’ he did not feel ‘capable of forming such 78

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a judgement as to embolden [him] to name a sum’. Dallas trusted to the ‘liberality’ and ‘friendship’ of Murray and determined to let the publisher decide.31 The copyright agreement, dated 6 April, shows that Murray paid Dallas 500 guineas (£525). The poem that was being printed at Davison’s was quite different to the poem Byron had brought back from his travels. The composition and revision of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage testify to the accuracy of Jerome McGann’s assertion that before he left England in 1816 Byron ‘paid scrupulous attention to the printing of his works, all legend to the contrary notwithstanding’.32 Byron revised the first two cantos extensively before his return, and a second time in response to suggestions from Dallas and Murray. The notion that Byron was too lazy or apathetic to revise his verse has been investigated by Zachary Leader, who argues the poet’s ‘carelessness … signal[s] upper-class hauteur – disdain for effort, graft, anything that smacks of the artisan or labourer’.33 In fact, Byron’s method of revision, guided though it may have been by his advisors, is exemplary of the collaborative process by which his texts were produced. A crucial change made while abroad was the altering of the protagonist’s name from ‘Burun’ (an ancient form of Byron) to ‘Harold’. In addition to altering the sequence of some stanzas he added two lyrics, ‘To Inez’ and Harold’s song ‘Good night’. Major revisions came after Dallas sent the poet a ‘protest’ and Byron, asking Dallas to ‘point out the stanzas … which you wish recast’, complied (BLJ II, 106). In response to Murray’s objections, mentioned in the publisher’s letter but more directly mediated through Dallas, Byron omitted three stanzas attacking Wellington, revised his treatment of the Convention of Cintra and omitted a stanza describing how William Beckford had been ‘smitten with unhallowed thirst / Of nameless crime’, although Byron had already determined never to publish that stanza.34 As Jane Stabler has emphasised, in requesting changes to the sections on British Foreign Policy, ‘Murray’s acute audience sensitivity anticipated the risk of satiric infection in what was otherwise a very popular genre’.35 In the second canto, Byron deleted two stanzas on Lord Elgin and revised a section questioning the afterlife.36 The most significant changes made to the poem were lines inserted in response to Byron’s grief on learning of the death of his mother and four close friends. In one of the most persuasive accounts of the genesis of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Tom Mole argues persuasively that when Byron began writing the poem ‘he imagined a small audience of friends who would mediate between him and the unpredictable reaction of a larger 79

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and more public audience’ and furthermore that the ‘loss of that sense of a mediating audience deprived Byron of the protective intimacy of a coterie’.37 There is little doubt that Byron keenly felt the initial loss of a sympathetic audience; when he returned to England it was to news of the death of his mother as well as his friends from Harrow and Cambridge, Hargreaves Hanson, Charles Skinner Matthews and John Wingfield. While at Newstead a few months later he received the devastating report that John Edleston had died of consumption the previous May. Shattered by this quick succession of losses, Byron in ‘last man’ mode wrote to Dallas that he had barely a tear left and that it felt ‘as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered’ (BLJ II, 110). McGann argues that making the ‘personal losses assume a kind of climactic significance in [the] poem’ was the crucial revision that gave the cantos their famous ‘reflective and melancholy character’.38 In a fascinating article, Paul Elledge demonstrates what he sees as the relative ambivalence of the tribute to Wingfield in order to view the extra stanzas as ‘closural strategies of a poet deeply anxious about reconnecting with an audience literally and literarily given up in circumstances that challenged its allegiances’.39 Mole, McGann and Elledge all focus on the fact that loss is the Byron’s primary focus in the poem. For Mole, it is the loss of a sympathetic coterie; for McGann, it is the personal loss of Byron’s friends and nearest relation; for Elledge, it is the potential loss of an audience. The revisions emphasise what was already the principal theme of the poem, the fear of being forgotten. Aside from the changes made out of consideration to his publisher and prospective readership, an additional effect of Byron’s revisions was to all but remove any trace of the comic or satiric in the opening cantos. Alan Rawes has stressed the inherent comedy of the early cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and shows how the poem can be seen as antecedent to Beppo. In discussing the first two cantos, Rawes focuses on the manner by which Byron ironically undermines our conventional expectations of the romance genre, and the fact that Harold himself is ‘both a sympathetic character and a ludicrous one’, frequently ‘perilously close to becoming an object of ridicule’.40 Rawes demonstrates that in its original format, the poem exhibited comic elements alongside the more apathetic and melancholy reflections. In making the rest of the poem more appropriate to the revised ending, Byron had little choice but to remove many of these aspects. His compliance with the requests of Murray and Dallas also led him to expunge many of the more ‘flippant’ 80

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passages. Byron’s suppression of Hints from Horace and the wholesale revision of Childe Harold further removed him from the poet who had, with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, ‘converted the republic of letters into one universal field of carnage’ (RR, B: II, 560). Disavowing English Bards necessitated appeasement of those who had been abused in the satire. Thomas Moore made the first overtures of friendship to Byron of his own accord, mainly to retract a challenge to a duel made in haste years earlier, but it was Murray who managed the reconciliation with Walter Scott and sent the first presentation copy of the newly published poem to Lord Holland in order to help heal a rift with Byron.41 Holland House, one of the ‘Whig palaces of power’, was a fashionable centre of political and literary activity in London, and Byron ‘forgot he hated society’ and relished being welcomed into their company.42 Walter Scott recognised the significance of this and wrote of the haste with which Byron had condemned the influential circle: ‘[t] he reconciliation with Holland-House is extremely edifying, and may teach young authors to be in no hurry to exercise their satirical vein’.43 Years later, Moore speculated on what might have happened if Byron had chosen to publish Hints from Horace: His former assailants would have resumed their advantage over him, and either, in the bitterness of his mortification, he would have flung Childe Harold into the fire; or had he summoned up sufficient confidence to publish that poem, its reception, even if sufficient to retrieve him in the eyes of the public and his own, could never have, at all, resembled that explosion of success – that instantaneous and universal acclaim of admiration into which, coming, as it were, fresh from the land of song, he now surprised the world, and in the midst of which he was borne, buoyant and self-assured, along, through a succession of new triumphs, each more splendid than the last.44

If we can excuse Moore’s inimitable hyperbole, he had a point. The suppression of Hints from Horace and the new edition of English Bards were intended to avoid Byron appearing ‘Janus-faced’ before his readers. It was also a necessary condition to ensure his acceptance into the realms of high society: the precise audience Murray wished to target with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Lord Holland later told Moore It was not from his birth that Lord Byron had taken the station he held in society, for till his talents became known, he was, in spite of his birth, in any thing but good society, and but for his talents would never, perhaps, have been in any better.45

Holland is obviously referring to the fact that it was Byron’s poetry 81

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rather than his title that had granted him access to the upper echelons of society. We would do well to remember that it was Murray’s deliberate cultivation of a particular audience that had brought Byron’s poetry to Holland’s attention. As we will see in the next chapter, Murray helped to manoeuvre Byron into a position where the onetime object of ridicule of the Edinburgh Review became so popular that he would rival Walter Scott. Notes 1 The lines echo Swift’s meditation on the transience of fame and the temporary nature of literary celebrity, Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D (1731), which is an amusing vision of the author’s death and the imagined reaction of society. Byron’s own meditation on fame is in Canto XIV of Don Juan: ‘For I was rather famous in my time / Until I fairly knocked it up with Rhyme’ (DJ, XVI, 9), echoing Swift’s lines from Verses, ‘The Dean was famous in his time, / And had a kind of knack at rhyme: / His way of writing now is past; The town has got a better taste’. 2 Marchand, Byron, I, p. 143. 3 Robert Charles Dallas, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron (London: Charles Knight, 1824) p. 20. 4 See letter from Dallas to Byron, 17 April 1809, JMA, MS. 43422. 5 Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf (Harcourt: Mariner, 2003), 7 August 1918, p. 3. 6 Dallas, Recollections, p. 103. 7 Ibid., p. 104. 8 Ibid., pp. 104, 113. 9 Ibid., p. 118. 10 Murray eventually purchased his premises at Albemarle Street from Miller, and ended up having a serious disagreement with him. Miller tried to claim that he was entitled to a copy of everything Murray published following the sale (SS I, 234). 11 Dallas, Recollections, p. 120. 12 See letter from Dallas to Murray and Highley, 13 June 1802. JMA, MS. 40307. 13 See letter from Dallas to Byron, 17 April 1809. JMA, MS. 43422. 14 Henry Crabbe Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, 3 vols, ed. Thomas Sadler (London: Macmillan, 1869) vol. 1, p. 30. 15 See Letters of James Cawthorn to Byron, JMA, MS 43417. 16 Dallas, Recollections, p. 118. 17 After Byron decided to supress the fifth edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Cawthorn continued publishing spurious editions. According to Hobhouse, there was almost an instance of violence. He records in a diary entry, 20 November 1814: ‘Found Cawthorne [sic] has turned out a rogue, and threatened Byron to republish his satire and publish his Hints from Horace – he tried to provoke Byron to strike him’. 18 Letter from Dallas to Murray, 18 August 1811. JMA, MS. 40307. 19 Letter from Dallas to Byron, 26 August 1811. JMA, MS. 43422. Murray usually left

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ja n us-fac e d London during the summer to visit his mother (in Chichester) or the D’Israelis (in Brighton). See LJM, 5. 20 Letter from Dallas to Byron, 26 August 1811. JMA, MS. 43422. 21 ‘Popularity’, The European Magazine and London Review, 62 (1812) p. 440. 22 Hazlitt, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 94. 23 Letter from Dallas to Byron, 5 September 1811. JMA, MS. 43422. 24 Letter from Dallas to Byron, 21 September 1811. JMA, MS. 43422. 25 Peter W. Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, p. 31. 26 Letter from Dallas to Byron, 21 September 1811. JMA, MS. 43422. 27 Letter from Dallas to Murray, 1 November 1811. JMA, MS. 40307. 28 C.H. Timperley, A Dictionary of Printers and Printing (1839) p. 919. 29 Peter Isaac, ‘Byron’s Publisher and his Printers’, The Newstead Byron Society Review, ed. Peter Cochran (Jul., 2000) p. 91. 30 Ibid., p.  96. 31 Letter from Dallas to John Murray, 4 April 1812. JMA, MS. 40307. 32 Jerome McGann, ‘Editing Byron’s Poetry’, The Byron Journal, I (1973) pp. 5–10, p. 7. 33 Zachary Leader, Revision and Romantic Authorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 84. 34 On the original manuscript Byron wrote ‘If ever published, I shall have this stanza omitted’. See Jerome McGann, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I–II: A Collation and Analysis’, Keats-Shelley Memorial Association Bulletin, no. XVII (1966) p. 41. 35 Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) p. 23. 36 See CPW II, 217–265. 37 Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity, p. 47. 38 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 109; CPW II, 217. 39 Paul Elledge, ‘Chasms in Connections: Byron Ending (In) Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 1 and 2’, ELH, vol. 62, no. 1 (Spring, 1995) p. 129. 40 Alan Rawes, Byron’s Poetic Experimentation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) pp. 7–8. 41 By the time Byron returned to England, Moore’s indignation at his treatment in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers had lessened considerably. Writing to Byron how ‘… Irishmen, in business of this kind, seldom know any medium between decided hostility and decided friendship’, he laid the foundations for their subsequent intimacy. See The Letters of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden, vol. 1, 1793–1818 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) p. 161. 42 Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (London: John Murray, 2002) p. 154; Ian Jack, The Poet and His Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) p. 65. 43 Scott, Letters, vol. II, p. 124. 4 4 Moore, Life, vol. II, p. 28. 45 Ibid., p.  660.

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ch a p ter four

‘… and found myself famous’ ‘… and found myself famous’ It is tempting to wonder whether John Murray would have felt aggrieved that Byron’s first major publishing success has been immortalised by a phrase that practically deprives the publisher of any recognition and hands the credit if not to Byron himself, then to fate. The words ‘I awoke one morning to find myself famous’, Byron’s reaction to the sudden and apparently unexpected nature of his triumph after the publication of Childe Harold in 1812, is one of the most persistent and potent legends surrounding his career.1 As Nicholas Mason notes, we need no further proof of the ‘enduring allure’ of this myth than the fact that nearly all anthologies of Romantic literature ‘reproduce the quotation as a one-sentence summary of Byron’s early years’.2 The publisher’s descendent John Murray VI once said he often had ‘the fanciful thought that on the morning that Byron woke up to find himself famous, Murray woke to find himself a gentleman’.3 This neatly articulates the mutual benefit the poem brought to poet and publisher. Moore’s colourful assessment of the situation following the publication of Childe Harold articulates the prevalent belief that Byron’s popularity was immediately widespread and instantly sensational: … never did there exist before, and it is most probable will never exist again, a combination of such vast mental power and surpassing genius, with so many other of those advantages and attractions, by which the world is, in general, dazzled and captivated. The effect was, accordingly, electric; – his fame had not to wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but seemed to spring up, like the palace of a fairy tale, in a night.4

Here, Moore recalls his own experience in London during 1812, where he witnessed the extraordinary success of the poem first hand. He wrote to his mother that ‘[the] poem is doing wonders, and there is nothing talked of but him every where’.5 Despite this, his subsequent presentation of Byron’s success as instant is overstated, principally as it ‘carries with it the sense that a book sells itself, independent of the promotional efforts of the author, publisher, and retailer’.6 It conceals Byron’s career 84

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prior to Murray and gives the reader the notion that the poet’s fame arrived with Childe Harold. We have already seen some of the processes that went unseen, or at least unrecognised by Moore, in the year before the publication of Childe Harold: the suppression of English Bards, the separation from James Cawthorn and the abandonment of plans to publish Hints from Horace. The ‘palace’ of Byron’s fame did not ‘spring up’ overnight; it was built by the efforts of Murray and his advisors. When the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published in March 1812, the first edition of 500 copies sold out in just three days. As Nicholas Mason notes, it would be impossible for such sales figures to be based on content alone as word of mouth publicity would have taken longer to generate interest.7 Understanding how such sales figures were achieved is dependent on an analysis of the pre-publication efforts of Murray and Byron in the months before the poem appeared. Like his father, Murray was acutely aware of the importance of advertising and stimulating interest in a new work previous to the appearance of reviews. Writing to his Edinburgh colleague Archibald Constable, he described how invaluable this kind of advance publicity was to a new work: It is inconceivable how effectually the continued advertisement of a book long previous to publication operates upon people in the country, and upon the booksellers, who, having heard the book mentioned, and having received orders for it, subscribe voraciously; and, indeed, it occasions many people to order or buy the book immediately, who would otherwise have waited for the opinion of their Review, and, had this proved cold or unfavourable, would not have been purchasers.8

Murray recognised the capability of reviewers to sway potential purchasers, and he would frequently withhold advance copies of Byron’s poems from reviews if he felt they might be less than enthusiastic about the work. His efforts in the months leading up to the appearance of Childe Harold illustrate his determination to negate the influence of the reviews and ensure an immediately favourable reaction to the poem based entirely on his marketing campaign. In light of this assessment of the advantages of advertising, it is perhaps surprising that the initial cost of advertising Childe Harold was a comparatively small amount of the cost of the first edition. Murray spent just under twenty pounds on direct advertising costs, a total of £19 13s 6d. He intended a different form of publicity for this poem, a campaign that exploited his author’s title and flair for self-promotion and the market for buying luxury books. That Murray wished to capitalise on Byron’s class is indicated by the delay in publishing the poem until after Byron gave his first speech in the 85

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House of Lords. Byron spoke at the House on 27 February 1812, opposing Tory plans to make frame breaking a capital offence. He took a radical line and strenuously opposed the bill, despite Lord Holland’s counsel to be restrained. Although it seems to have been the general opinion, even of Byron himself, that his delivery was a bit too ‘theatrical’, he was pleased by the thought that he had given ‘the best advertisement for Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’.9 No doubt Murray would have concurred. The first advertisement for the poem that appeared little over a week later on 5 March emphasised the name and title of the author by beginning and ending with it in capital letters.10 As we have seen from Murray’s first letter to Byron, he readily acknowledged that the reasons behind his request for changes to the content of the poem were commercial; he feared that some of the passages might offend prospective readers. It is crucial to note that valid as this reason surely was to Murray, it was the first step in the publisher’s active creation of a specific audience for Byron’s poetry. The decisions made by Murray regarding the appearance and content of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage highlight how the publisher could play a role in what William Wordsworth described as the author’s task, namely ‘creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed’.11 If we look at Childe Harold as a material product, that is, at the physical book rather than the poem, we can see how effectively Murray managed to target an audience of affluent, upper-class readers. McGann writes that Murray considered the audience ‘a wealthy one … interested in travel books and topographical poems … with a classical education and … a taste for antiquarian lore and the philosophical musings of a young English lord’.12 Far from simply conceiving of his audience in these terms, Murray made sure who the initial readers of Childe Harold would be by producing a highly expensive volume affordable only to wealthy readers. The first edition of Childe Harold is a beautifully produced quarto volume. Quarto editions are sizeable, heavy books with wide margins and large type; William St Clair describes them as ‘comfortable on the eyes, although not on the arms or wrists’.13 Byron disagreed with Murray on the format, calling it a ‘cursed unsaleable size’ (BLJ II, 113). He was clearly aware of the importance of size and format in determining his readership and did not wish for an expensive volume to deter prospective readers. For many people in the early nineteenth century new books were expensive luxuries, but even taking this into consideration, the cost of Childe Harold was exorbitant. Unbound and in boards, which was the way most books were originally sold, the poem cost 30 shillings. A bound 86

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version cost 50 shillings. To put this in context, it has been estimated that the average weekly wage of a gentleman in the early 1800s was approximately 100 shillings. A copy of the first edition of Childe Harold would therefore be half of this weekly income.14 Only the wealthiest readers could justify this kind of discretionary expenditure. The poem was printed on heavy paper, and in a clear, highly readable type; Murray had high hopes of success for his venture, and manufactured the poem accordingly. Considering the expensive production and high cost of the first edition, it is reasonable to assume that Murray intended to appeal to an audience who were interested in what we would today call ‘coffeetable books’. Such books were frequently spoken of with derision by leading authors, who deplored publishers’ tactics of encasing the text in an expensive and attractive exterior. In a letter to Anna Seward, Walter Scott offers an eloquent summary of this point: … books are no longer solely respected for their insides since they have been honoured with admission into the drawing room which although a very pleasing & sensible transition from the stiffness of ancient manners … has nevertheless contributed greatly to render Books expensive as elegant pieces of furniture.15

Robert Southey echoed this opinion in a letter contemplating the fate of his Madoc, which was soon to be published by Thomas Longman in a costly quarto edition: … books are now so dear that they are becoming rather articles of fashionable furniture more than anything else; they who buy them do not read them, and they who read them do not buy them … If Madoc obtain any celebrity, its size and cost will recommend it among these gentry – libros consumeri nati – born to buy quartos …16

Scott and Southey are contemptuous of the libros consumeri nati, those purchasers who were arguably more concerned with the appearance of a book than its insides. One of the most famous assessments of Childe Harold’s popularity describes how it was ‘on every table’.17 This comment by the Duchess of Devonshire articulates the extent to which Byron’s poem, and indeed Byron himself, had been granted access to the drawing rooms of the elite of London society. Creating a limited edition, a must-have product, enhanced the already mysterious aura surrounding the author. Byron played the role of enigmatic author to perfection, and the elite Holland House readership cultivated by Murray was a receptive audience for his performance. Byron and Childe Harold, or more accurately, Byron as Childe Harold was the greatest object of 87

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desire in London in 1812; he was ‘really the only topic almost of every conversation’.18 Byron himself described this time as his ‘reign’ (BLJ III, 230). What was it that made Childe Harold and Byron so popular? The two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage comprised only part of the volume published by Murray. Along with the revisions and additions to the text, Byron described how he had been ‘sweating Notes to a large amount, so that ye. “Body of ye. Book” will be bulky’ (BLJ II, 130). The volume was substantial, consisting of four parts divided over 227 pages. The poem constituted the first part, 109 pages, and the remaining sections comprised fourteen shorter poems and appendices comprising notes and translations. The notes are an important parallel text to the poem as they emphasise the strong historical and political dimension. Murray evidently intended to appeal to the contemporary interest in antiquarian literature, but the notes are more than an accompaniment to the poem and serve a greater purpose than to produce a ‘bulky’ volume. As well as providing details about Byron’s travels, which would have undoubtedly appealed to his readers, the notes are an intellectual exposition of the theme Byron treats emotionally in his poem: the ‘littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues’ (CPW II, 189). The ultimate vanity of human wishes according to Byron is in the attempt to defy or conquer time. Harold wanders around Europe seeking relief from his weariness; but he encounters emptiness and signs of the futility of human endeavour, represented by Byron throughout the poem by war and architectural decay. Referring to Byron’s skilful merging of styles, Peter Manning reminds us that the ‘novelty of Childe Harold sprang not from its independence of precedent but from its polyphony – or to detractors, cacophony – of styles in themselves familiar’.19 Samuel Rogers thought that the genius of the poem was the ‘youth, the rank of the author, his romantic wanderings in Greece’, all of which combined to make the world ‘stark mad about Childe Harold and Byron’.20 It is easy to see from estimations of Byron’s popularity such as Rogers’s how easily someone like Murray has been pushed to the background. Byron’s intense fame presents problems for every critic of his poetry, and despite the recent attention to the material forces behind his popularity it still retains something of a mythic quality. Perhaps it does not need emphasising, but the ‘world’ was not instantly mad about Childe Harold, just the few who could afford Murray’s editions. Once the aura of immediate popularity was created, Murray made his primary profit on a series of octavo editions. He publicised these editions no less strenuously; his 88

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Copies Ledger records that he sent out twenty-five presentation copies of the second edition.21 Recognising the role of Murray as a determined figure in the manufacturing of Byron’s initial fame helps us to unravel some of the more potent myths. It also gives Murray the credit he deserves as an integral part of the Childe Harold phenomenon. As Ian Jack has stated of Byron and his publisher, ‘no actor, certainly, has ever had a better impresario’.22 In fairness to Byron, the impresario had an accomplished actor to work with. The fact that the author was a handsome young aristocrat evidently helped in this regard. Byron performed the role of the brooding and disaffected poet with aplomb, his behaviour described by Moore as ‘accordant with the romantic notions of him’.23 In his biography of the poet, Moore writes of Byron’s ‘double aspect’, the ‘spell of his poetical character’, which encouraged his audience to imagine that the ‘fierce gloom and sternness of his imaginary personages’ belonged to himself.24 This was apparently in contrast to Byron’s engaging and sociable disposition amongst his friends. Such behaviour can partly be attributed to shyness; however, it is largely confirmation of the fact that the poet was able to play his part in society. Byron attended countless parties and dined out repeatedly at the most fashionable houses in society. Male readers admired the forceful, masculine qualities of his verse, or the ‘manly freshness’ as Francis Jeffrey described it (RR, B: II, 837). The effect on female readers was even more dramatic. The Murray archive contains several letters from adoring female fans; most imagining they would be able to console the deeply emotional poet, and frequently beginning ‘Dear Childe Harold’.25 Some women requested to meet Byron in secret, the less forward admirers asked for a lock of hair, a signed work or ‘an occasional place in [his] lordship’s thoughts’.26 Byron was intrigued by his legions of female fans and kept most of the letters, enough, he told Lady Blessington, ‘to fill a large volume’.27 Like the prefaces to Hours of Idleness and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the prelude to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage has something of a disclaimer about it. Byron hints that the poem is unfinished, but that ‘its reception will determine’ whether the author will continue, and that the ‘two cantos are merely experimental’ (CPW II, 3). It appears that the author is willing to be guided by the public’s opinion of his work and modify it accordingly. This note in the preface is, however, the only instance in the two cantos where Byron so explicitly engages with his poem as a product, something that would be purchased by prospective readers. Even though it was Dallas, Murray and Gifford who ultimately 89

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convinced Byron of the poem’s potential profitability, we can see from a rejected stanza in an early draft that Childe Harold was initially, like his satire, engaged with the literary marketplace. Stanza eighty-seven originally read as follows: Ye! who would more of Spain and Spaniards know Sights, Saints, antiques, arts, anecdotes, and War, Go hie ye hence to Paternoster Row, Are they not written in the Book of Carr, Green Erin’s Knight! and Europe’s wandering star! Then listen, readers, to the man of ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar – All these are cooped within one Quarto’s brink This borrow, steal (don’t buy) and tell us what you think.28

The revisions removed references to Paternoster Row, location of many of the leading publishers, ink, quartos and the instruction to the reader to buy further books on the topics Byron addressed in his poem. The revised stanza, part of the changes that so effectively altered the character of the entire poem, indicates that Byron was somewhat wary of including these overt references to the marketplace in his poem. The original stanza also illustrates that Byron was very much aware of one of the chief attractions of his work, the description of political and historical events and the tendency towards travelogue. In assessing the contemporary popularity of the text, this element cannot be overstated. George Ellis of the Quarterly Review expressed his surprise that, considering ‘the greater part of every community are confined either by necessity or indolence, to a very narrow space on the globe’, no poet had previously ‘thought fit to employ his talents on a subject so obviously well suited to their display’ (RR, B: V, 1990). The descriptions are certainly part of what made the poem so popular, and Byron has a very specific political agenda. Nevertheless, it was not travel or politics that intrigued readers so much as the marginalised, yet still somehow overbearing figure of Harold himself. In the preface to the poem, Byron appears to downplay the centrality of his protagonist, describing him in terms of a literary device, merely ‘introduced for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece’ (CPW II, 4). The author evidently feels that Harold is somewhat of a unifying presence; he is there to hold together a series of separate reflections. The Edinburgh Review describes the reflections as ‘strung upon the slender thread of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and … held together by the still slighter tie of the author’s situation at the time of writing’ (RR, B: II, 90

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836). Byron anticipates biographical readings of his poem and endeavours to draw his readers away from such interpretations by stressing that ‘Harold is the child of imagination’ (CPW II, 4). An astute contemporary reviewer remarked that this disclaimer ‘seems merely like one of those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it’ (RR, B: II, 569). Like the majority of Byron’s heroes, the reader is given virtually no detailed information on the character’s troubled background, or the reason he is stricken with guilt: ‘Childe Harold was he hight: – but whence his name / And lineage long, it suits me not to say’ (I.3). Despite, or perhaps because of Byron’s preface, many readers tried to find the source of Harold’s woes in the figure of the poet. Murray did not discourage this; a good example of this is the fact that the illustrations accompanying the poem bore a deliberate and striking resemblance to the author. Additionally, Byron was horrified to learn that Murray’s shop assistants were referring to the poem as ‘Childe of Harrow’s Pilgrimage’. The publisher was ‘scolded heartily’ (BLJ II, 111). There were three figures behind the sensational popularity of this poem: Byron, Murray and Harold. Murray marketed Byron, his youth, his nobility, his travels, and used him as the unifying principle behind the poem; Childe Harold was encased in an impressive exterior, literally holding the poem together and symbolically signalling a new direction, one that moves away from the satire of Byron’s early career. The first two cantos of Childe Harold chart the journey of the melancholy protagonist; they also contain important reflections on the state of Europe, particularly Greece. As a topographical poem, it is highly accurate; the poet prided himself on the ‘correctness of the descriptions’ (CPW II, 3). Throughout the poem Byron uses Harold as his anchor, as something he can return to after scenic descriptions or his musings on the folly of human ambition and the destructive power of time. Harold, as he freely admits, is the connecting principle in the poem. The fact that he needed a device of this kind is gestured to by the explanation of his choice of form. Byron uses a passage from Dr Beattie to tell us that he chose to write in Spenserian stanzas because it gave ‘full scope to [his] inclination, and to be either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humour strikes me’ (CPW II, 4). It hardly needs to be said that this is an excellent summary not of the use of Spenserian stanzas, but of the Ottava Rima stanza Byron would employ to such effect later on in his career. The point is that the inclination towards such verse, towards poetry that could register a range of tones and voices, was already there as early as Childe Harold. 91

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Despite Byron’s massive popularity, there was something of what Jane Stabler calls a ‘turbulent aspect’ to his early critical reception.29 We have already seen how many of Byron’s contemporary reviewers disliked the abrupt changes in tone that occur throughout the poem. These have variously been seen as a result of the revisions, of careless verse or characteristic of Byronic mobility. The leap from English Bards to Childe Harold seems a significant one: from a neo-classical imitation of Pope disparaging contemporary verse to a decidedly confessional, Romantic poem which begins with an address to the Muses. These differences aside, we can easily argue that the themes of the poems are in fact quite similar. We need to remember the impetus behind English Bards, Byron’s belief that ‘taste is over with us, & another century, will sweep our Empire, our literature, & our name from all, but a place in the annals of mankind’ (CMP, 3). The satire displays a fear of a deluge of texts and is a Malthusian call for a check on contemporary poets, the fact that Byron was adding to this deluge with Childe Harold is undoubtedly part of the reason he was so hesitant to publish and wanted to do so anonymously. Childe Harold displays a comparable engagement with the verdict of posterity; a similar belief that time will ultimately erase contemporary fame, however great. Childe Harold is a poem preoccupied with emptiness and excess. The protagonist’s main problem is that he has been so overdosed with pleasure that he is left feeling unfulfilled. This paradox of a ‘bloated’ (I.30) yet empty figure is one of many contradictory stances that are evident throughout the poem. In a clear subversion of his reader’s expectations of the genre, although Byron subtitles the poem ‘a Romaunt’ and fills it with archaic diction, the pilgrimage of the title is not that of a medieval quest, but the escape of an apathetic and weary young man suffering from a distinctly modern form of ennui. The poem tellingly begins with an image of lost fame. Having declined to provide any information on Harold’s past, the narrator tells us that his family were once ‘of fame, / And had been glorious in another day’ (I.3). This change in status is reflected in the family estate, a ‘vast and venerable pile’ that had lately been ‘condemn’d to uses vile’ (I.7). Harold soon reveals his credentials as the prototype Byronic hero. The narrator describes how ‘he through Sin’s long labyrinth had run’ (I.5), and it is hinted that his villainy is connected to a loved one to whom his kiss had been ‘pollution’ (I.5). Although he is melancholy, ‘sore sick at heart’, his innate pride refuses to let him cry, it ‘congeal’d’ the ‘sullen tear’ (I.6). Harold’s despair stems from his feeling ‘the fullness of satiety’; with ‘pleasure drugg’d he almost 92

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long’d for woe’ (I.4, 6). The excess of pleasure has led the Childe to a realisation of its inability to truly satisfy him. The fleeting nature of celebrity is bitterly portrayed by the narrator, who describes how Harold ‘gather’d revellers from far and near’ despite the fact that he ‘knew them flatt’rers of the festal hour; / The heartless parasites of present cheer’ (I.9). Byron juxtaposes material wealth with genuine feeling as he describes how ‘Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair’ (I.9). The metaphors used in the depiction of fame up to this point in the poem support an interpretation of it as transitory, hollow and ultimately unsatisfactory. Harold’s revelries cannot ease his conscience any more than poetry can: ‘nor honied lies of rhyme / Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime’ (I.3), and his friends seem to be attached to him out of purely mercenary motives. Harold is consistently described as full or sated; despite this he still lacks something in his life and decides to leave. It is his separation and farewell that provide us with a clue to the source of his melancholy as he laments that his ‘greatest grief’ is that he leaves ‘No thing that claims a tear’ (I. viii). It is clear that one of Harold’s deepest fears is that he may be forgotten; we can therefore speculate that his reason for departure is not entirely apathetic, but may be the desire to achieve something he will be remembered for. We can support this reading by returning to the preface and taking note of the one stimulation that Byron allows Harold to respond to, ‘ambition, the most powerful of all excitements’ (CPW II, 6). Unfortunately for the protagonist, everything he sees on his travels impresses him with the realisation that ambition and fame are ultimately futile pursuits. Harold crosses a continent ravaged by the Peninsular War, and his responses to the natural beauty of the landscapes are always tempered by an awareness of the corruption, political upheaval and blood lust that characterised the conflict. This dual response is a central theme of the poem; Harold is always reminded of what lies beneath the façade of the beautiful scenery he encounters. Looking at ‘rude carv’d crosses’ in Portugal, we are warned not to deem them ‘devotion’s offering’, but to see them as they really are, ‘memorials frail of murderous wrath’ (I.21); Byron’s note explains that the crosses commemorate the victims of assassinations in Portugal. Harold next views the ‘ruin’d splendour’ (I.22) of William Beckford’s former home. The ruins of the palace are not just in the decay of the building; Byron employs an image of nature taking over to effectively signal the fact that the palace now resembles a ‘thing unblest by man’ (I.23). ‘[G]iant weeds a passage scarce allow’ in the halls and Harold is left to speculate on ‘how / Vain are the pleasaunces 93

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on earth supplied, / Swept into wrecks anon by Time’s ungentle tide!’ (I.23). This is the first example of what is a central theme in the poem; Byron sets out to ‘deconstruct the illusory permanence of architectural ambition’ through the constant use of motifs of decay, erosion, ruin and faded grandeur.30 This metaphor is most effectively employed later on in the poem with reference to the Parthenon, but its introduction early on in the first canto signals Byron’s intention to meditate on the inevitability of the fact that ‘all must yield [to] accursed Time’ (I. 66). The accusations that Byron faced of speaking in a ‘slighting and sarcastic manner of wars, and victories, and military heroes in general’ refer to the stanzas in the first canto on the Convention of Cintra and the Battle of Albuera (RR, B: II, 837). For Byron, these events epitomised the ultimate futility of war. Following the English victory over the French at Vimiera in 1808, a convention decided to allow the weakened French army to return home unhindered, and even agreed to aid their transport. This caused a great deal of consternation in England, and Byron is no less appalled at the ‘champions cheated of their fame’, asking ‘How will posterity the deed proclaim!’ (I.26). The stanzas on Albuera are similarly indignant, although his description of the ‘glorious field of grief’ perhaps betrays a certain ambivalence in his attitude. Although over 4,000 British soldiers were killed at Albuera, the English press proclaimed it a victory. For Byron, these proclamations of triumph are ultimately hollow: the dead soldiers are merely ‘the theme of transient song’ (I.43). He also disputes the notion that this victory would bestow posthumous glory on any of the dead, challenging the possibility of the ‘Battle’s minions’ ever attaining true fame:           … let them play Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame: Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay, Though thousands fall to deck some single name. (I.44)

The implication is clear, Byron views military glory as a chimera; however, rather than viewing this as evidence of a ‘sarcastic’ attitude to war, it is perhaps more accurate to connect it to the overall theme of the vanity of human wishes and the impossibility of attaining lasting fame. Jerome Christensen links this stance to the lack of a ‘story’ in the poem, writing that Byron seeks to show how ‘historical events have annihilated individual lifelines’.31 It is this realisation that makes Harold so dejected. He cannot take pleasure in ‘earthly things’ (I.2), and as everything around him makes him question the possibility of lasting fame then it 94

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is little wonder he ends up so disconsolate that his narrator has to ‘urge the gloomy wanderer o’er the wave’ (II.16). The second canto finds Harold in Greece at the temple of Athena. Greece, for Byron, was a symbol of the very highest ideals of western civilisation, and to find it subservient to military rule and vulnerable to losing her heritage to people like Lord Elgin merely crystallises the cynicism of the protagonist. Harold sees that Parnassus, the sacred shrine of Apollo and ‘symbolic apex of literature, art, and culture’ is surrounded by ‘waste and infertility’.32 This is significant in that it raises the issue of the degeneration of literature and specifically poetry, a theme Byron had explored in his satire. The first canto begins by describing how Apollo had been ‘sham’d full oft by later lyres on earth’ (I.1) and the physical disintegration of Parnassus emphasises this theme. In the second canto the temple of Athena is described as surrounded by ‘war and wasting fire’ (II.4), and though it endures the narrator questions its symbolic import and challenges the concept of heroism, asking: Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone – glimmering through the dream of things that were: First in the race that led to Glory’s goal, They won, and pass’d away – is this the whole? A school-boy’s tale, the wonder of an hour! (II. 2)

Byron fears this kind of oblivion; everything in the poem reinforces the central idea of faded and ruined greatness. The most we can hope for is to be ‘the wonder of an hour’, a temporary fame that is ultimately illusory as it will, like everything else, pass away. The title of a contemporary parody of Childe Harold by James and Horace Smith, Cui Bono? 33 (What’s the point?), is an excellent description of Harold’s disconsolate attitude because this is precisely his response to scenes of war and ruined architecture: if this is how things are going to end, then what is the point? Contemporary reviewers often addressed this cynical, indifferent attitude, seeking to provide an answer to Harold’s misanthropic view of fame. George Ellis offered the following advice: It is certainly untrue that fame is of little value: it is something to be honoured by those whom we love. It is something to the soldier when he returns to the arms of a mother, a wife, or a sister … these joys of triumph, it may be said, are mere illusions; but for the sake of such illusions is life chiefly worth having. (RR, B: V, 1992)

Ellis unwittingly zones in on the central argument of the poem, that our temporary triumphs are precisely that: momentary illusions. The value of 95

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fame according to Ellis is linked to the joy we share with those we love, those who remember us. This value was of no use to Byron, who returned to England to find that his mother and four of his closest friends were dead. The melancholy that overtakes Harold and the narrator is expressed in the final stanza of the last canto, where the metaphors of loss, abandonment and erosion are made personal to the poet: What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each lov’d one blotted from life’s page And be alone on earth, as I am now. (II. 98)

Clearly reflecting Byron’s grief over the death of his mother and close friends, we can also add that the ‘worst of woes’ for him in the absence of loved ones is not just that he is alone, but the thought that if there is no one there to remember him, then he too will be ‘blotted from life’s page’. The poem has shown that the fear of being forgotten is at least partly the source of Harold’s despair, a despair that is compounded by the realisation that consciousness is incapable of freeing one from the ruins of history, a notion that McGann calls ‘the grand illusion of every Romantic poet’.34 Byron exposes this illusion and all it represents; that the fractured remains of European history and the fear that his memory will be obliterated weigh heavily on his shoulders. Despite the negative assessment of fame throughout Childe Harold, Byron’s attitude towards fame and popularity was equivocal. We have ample evidence to suggest he was an ambitious poet who revelled in his celebrity, though he once described his ambition as his ‘greatest error’ (BLJ V, 135). Although he often expressed scepticism regarding the merits of his fame, claiming to know the ‘precise worth of popular applause’ (BLJ VI, 106), what differentiates Byron from other Romantic poets, many of whom also doubted the value of present fame, is that he was ‘equally sceptical about the culture of posterity’.35 This scepticism saturates Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, but, as we have seen, John Murray readily employed the metaphor of a ‘monument’ to describe the fame that awaited Byron. The irony of Murray’s statement to Byron must have seemed even more acute in light of the fact that a great many reviewers wrote of how all he could hope for was a temporary success. The Eclectic Review was particularly pessimistic in its assessment of the potential longevity of the poem. Recognising that the ‘tumult of praise and popularity’, so expertly managed by Murray, had done much to gloss over the weaknesses of the poem, the reviewer wrote that he could not ‘challenge for Lord Byron a place among those poets … who will 96

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be remembered’ (RR, B: II, 707). He also shows an awareness of the influence of external factors such as Murray’s marketing campaign and Byron’ s personality in creating interest in the work: We doubt not, that Lord Byron’s poem will long be read and praised, we are also very certain, that the praise which it receives will become fainter, in proportion as they who read and they who criticise, are less under the influence of those motives to which we have alluded. (RR, B: II, 707)

Those motives were of course Byron’s youth, rank, his speech in the House of Lords and undoubtedly the fact that his initial reading public were, thanks to Murray, members of London’s fashionable society. The publisher wrote that with the poem, Byron was ‘raising a Monument that will outlive [his] present feelings’ (LJM, 3). The implication is unmistakable. Murray is asking Byron to put aside his ‘present feelings’ out of consideration for his future fame. This is at odds with Murray’s statement that the reason behind the request for changes was that the sentiments ‘do not harmonize with the general feeling’ (LJM, 3). This ‘general feeling’ dictated the business practice of Murray’s firm and his request is an effective acknowledgement of the power of the reading public. Jane Stabler is right to emphasise that Murray’s sense of a prevalent feeling ‘points to a new version of the eighteenth-century “public sphere”’, and that this was Murray’s first consideration when assessing manuscripts.36 We can infer several things from Murray’s first letter to Byron, not least this intimation of the power of the reader. Murray tells his new poet that he could raise a monument to his fame, but only if he modifies his work according to the present taste. The inference is that there are so many new works published, one that is not immediately popular will stand little chance of surviving the author. Byron’s reaction to the unexpected nature of his literary fame was ambivalent. His correspondence throughout the period constantly refers to the worthlessness of literary fame, but he was clearly enchanted with his success. It is likely that being part of Murray’s circle of authors and making friends with people like Moore helped Byron to be more comfortable with his status as a ‘scribbler’. His previous distaste for the profession (while decidedly uncertain) was part of his impression of the poet as a social recluse, merely concerned with reflecting upon himself. This brings us back to one of Byron’s principle grievances with his contemporary poets: his belief that they were fundamentally obscure and inaccessible. In Beppo he would write that ‘One hates an author that’s all author, fellows / In foolscap uniforms turn’d up with ink’ (l. 596). Years later, he would write to Murray claiming that with the exception 97

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of Moore, Scott and Gifford, most poets he had encountered had always something ‘more or less of the author about them – the pen peeping from behind the ear – & the thumbs a little inky or so’ (BLJ V, 192). Byron soon saw that the possibilities of poetry included an active social life with men of a like-minded disposition, and he thrived within the literary circle: I have lately been leading a most poetical life with Messrs Rogers Moore & Campbell … R[ogers] & Moore are very pleasing, & not priggish as poetical personages are apt to be … (BLJ II, 128)

Murray encouraged Byron to associate with his authors, and was particularly gratified to be able to effect a reconciliation between his new poet and Walter Scott. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers Byron had placed Scott alongside the authors who ‘rack their brains for lucre, not for fame’ (l. 178). In a letter to Robert Southey, Scott had described it as ‘funny enough to see a whelp of a young Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances he knows nothing, for endeavouring to scratch out a living with my pen’.37 In June 1812 Byron met and conversed with the Prince Regent, who declared Scott to be his favourite contemporary writer. Byron informed Murray of the Prince’s deep admiration for Scott, and the publisher used this as a starting point to reconcile the two famous authors. Having heard from Murray, Scott wrote to Byron expressing his belief that the enthusiastic publisher had exaggerated matters, ‘I dare say our worthy bibliopolist overcoloured his report’.38 Byron replied to Scott and explained that he was ‘haunted by the ghosts’ of the ‘wholesale assertions’ in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. He also acquitted Murray of the charge of hyperbole. ‘I defy Murray to have exaggerated his R[oyal] H[ighness]’s opinion of your powers’, the Prince ‘preferred [Scott] to every bard past & present’ (BLJ II, 182). Byron would meet Scott for the first time a few years later in the drawing room of Murray’s new premises at Albemarle Street. The next chapter will describe the years of Byron’s greatest commercial success and Murray’s rise to a position where Byron could claim that someone accepted as a client by the publisher would become ‘a staple author’ (BLJ III, 15). Notes 1 Moore, Life, vol. I, p. 347. 2 Nicholas Mason, ‘Building Brand Byron: Early-Nineteenth-Century Advertising and the Marketing of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 4 (Dec., 2002) p. 424,

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‘… a n d fou n d m y se l f fa mous’ 3 John Murray, ‘A Poet and his Publisher’, Presidential Address, 1976. 4 Moore, Life, vol. II, p. 137. 5 Moore, Letters, vol. I, p. 187. 6 Nicholas Mason, ‘Building Brand Byron’, p. 424. 7 Ibid., p. 424. 8 See Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents, vol. 1, p. 348. 9 Dallas, Recollections, p. 204. 10 See Mason, ‘Building Brand Byron’, p. 434. 11 William Wordsworth, ‘Essay Supplementary to the Preface’, The Major Works, p. 657. 12 Jerome McGann, The Beauty of Inflections (London: Clarendon, 1985) p. 259. 13 William St Clair, ‘The Impact of Byron’s Writings: An Evaluative Approach’, Byron: Augustan and Romantic, ed. Andrew Rutherford (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990) p. 2. 14 See William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 195. 15 Scott, Letters, vol. I, 346. 16 Charles Cuthbert Southey, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1849–50) vol. 2, p. 329. 17 Andrew Rutherford, ed., Byron: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970) p. 36. 18 Ibid., p. 36. 19 Peter J. Manning, ‘Childe Harold in the Marketplace’, Modern Language Quarterly, 52 (1991) p. 171. 20 Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage, p. 35. 21 JMA, MS. 42724. Among the recipients of presentation copies were Sharon Turner, Isaac D’Israeli, Thomas Dibdin, William Erskine, Mrs Rundell and Walter Scott. 22 Jack, A Poet and His Audience, p. 65. 23 Moore, Life, vol. I, p. 355. 24 Ibid., p.  393. 25 In John Gibson Lockhart’s anonymously written Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Byron By John Bull (1821), he facetiously imagines a conversation between Byron’s female fans as they admire a print of him: ‘… dear Harriet Smith, and dear, dear Mrs. Elton, do tell me, is not this just the very look, that one would have fancied for Childe Harold? Oh! what eyes and eyebrows! – Oh! what a chin!’ See Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage, pp. 182–183. 26 See MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend, pp. 161–163. 27 Ibid., p.  163. 28 See Jerome McGann, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I–II: A Collation and Analysis’, p. 49; CPW II, 41. 29 Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History, p. 19. 30 Philip Martin, ‘Heroism and History: Childe Harold I an II and the Tales’, The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p. 83. 31 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 67. 32 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 57. 33 See John Jump, ed., Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan, A Casebook (London: Macmillan, 1973) p. 27.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay 34 Jerome McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983) p. 91. 35 Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) p. 192. 36 Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History, p. 23. 37 Scott, Letters, vol. II, p. 214. 38 Ibid., vol. III, 139.

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‘I have written too much’1 ‘i have written too much’ In early 1821, at a time when the relationship between publisher and poet had become increasingly strained, John Murray wrote to Byron to inform him that he did not think the poet’s new work Marino Faliero would be popular. Clearly resentful of the implication that he was concerned with popularity, Byron replied asking ‘did I ever write for popularity?’ and defied Murray ‘to show a work of mine (except a tale or two) of a popular style or complexion’ (BLJ VIII, 78). There were actually six of them; they form a group of poems written in England during the time of Byron’s greatest commercial success, the years between 1812 and 1816, and include The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair (1814), Lara (1814), The Siege of Corinth (1816) and Parisina (1816). The poet’s admission that the tales were written in ‘a popular style’ is not the only occasion where he considers the commercial and fashionable nature of his works. In Beppo Byron writes: Oh that I had the art of easy writing What should be easy reading! could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit indicting Those pretty poems never known to fail, How quickly would I print (the world delighting) A Grecian, Syrian, or Assyrian tale; And sell you, mix’d with western sentimentalism, Some samples of the finest Orientalism! (ll. 401–408)

Jerome McGann rightly emphasises the ‘genius’ and ‘benevolent critique’ of this stanza as it ‘manages to be at once critical and sympathetic toward Byron’s career’.2 The stanza is an insightful examination of the poet’s motivation during his years of fame and candidly reflects on some key issues that greatly preoccupied him at the time of writing the ‘poems never known to fail’. The lines recall the success of Eastern tales during the early nineteenth century and Byron’s participation in that phenomenon. The popular tales consolidated Byron’s fame, but the lines from Beppo reveal unease regarding the effortless nature of their 101

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composition, the rapidity of printing and publication, the virtually guaranteed audience and the unashamed ‘sentimentalism’ of the works. This chapter investigates this unease as it accelerated during Byron’s ‘years of fame’ and relates it to the poet’s growing awareness of and reservations about his participation in the commercial machine that was John Murray’s establishment. Professionally, these years were a triumph for Byron. The massive popularity of the Eastern tales helped the poet enter ‘the vortex of gaiety and of flattery’ and become one of the most famous men in London.3 Murray bombarded Byron with sales figures to assure the poet of his ‘continuing success’: ‘Four Thousand, Five Hundred – and in less than six months’, ‘no less than 878 copies of the Fifth Edition of Childe Harold’, ‘Childe Harold is entirely out of print everywhere’, ‘13,000 Copies a thing perfectly unprecedented’, ‘Six Thousand Copies are gone!!!’ (LJM, 21, 8, 33, 79, 103). While Byron’s poetry was selling in vast quantities, Murray was convinced that their excited reception ‘will subside into lasting fame’ (LJM, 72). Byron’s correspondence of this period displays his bemusement with the extent of his popularity; however, the letters at this time are chiefly preoccupied with his turbulent personal life. Byron had a tumultuous affair with Lady Caroline Lamb and a short-lived (and disastrous) marriage to Annabella Milbanke, all the while attempting to conceal the details of his relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. For Murray, the years saw the rapid expansion of his business, exemplified by one of the most important moments in the history of the firm: his acquisition of fashionable new premises in Albemarle Street. Albemarle Street is in Mayfair, just off Picadilly. Named after the Duke of Albemarle, it was laid down towards the end of the seventeenth century. It has the distinction of being the first one-way street in London due to the traffic caused by the popularity of Humphry Davy’s public lectures at the Royal Institution. Davy gave his first lecture on the subject of galvanism in April 1801; his last was delivered in 1812. From 1813 to 1816, traffic was a serious issue on Albemarle Street on the days that Byron’s new Tales were issued. No. 50 Albemarle Street, a four-storey town house, was built around 1715 and was a private house until 1804, when William Miller made it the site of his bookselling business.4 In 1812 Miller made the somewhat surprising decision to retire from the book trade at the age of 43. Asking, ‘What has moved Miller to retire?’ Walter Scott wrote to Murray that he could not understand why someone would ‘quit a thriving trade’ (SS I, 236–237). Informing Constable of his decision to succeed Miller, Murray wrote 102

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that the ‘retirement is very extraordinary for no one in the trade will believe he has made a fortune’ (SS I, 233). Whatever Miller’s reasons, his retirement afforded Murray the opportunity he had been waiting for to expand his business. Murray claimed that the move was ‘no sudden thing’ and that he was prompted by the knowledge of what he could accomplish ‘in such a situation’ (SS I, 196.). Convinced that the move would prove ‘an advantageous opening’, he acquired the lease of the premises, together with copyrights and stock for £3,822 12s 6d (SS I, 233–234). He secured the mortgage to finance the move with the copyrights of Domestic Cookery, the Quarterly Review and Marmion. The debt was not paid off until 1821. Smiles records that the enormity of the move ‘was so momentous and the responsibility so great, that at times [Murray] was driven almost to the verge of despondency’ (SS I, 235). Murray’s anxiety was magnified by Miller’s unfriendly behaviour in the transition. Some months after Murray had taken possession of Albemarle Street, Miller tried to claim that he had a right to a copy of every work that Murray published. No such arrangement had ever been made, and in his refusal of this claim, Murray openly questioned the judgement of Miller, the man who had refused to publish Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: I should be glad to know upon what grounds you can require the fulfilment of an ‘honorary contract’ who could sit down and in cold blood write your farewell demands upon your best customers without mentioning the name of your successor; though he but a few days before had paid you a sum that went far towards securing the comfort of your future existence. The fact is, Miller, I have never received from you any one act of friendship since I purchased your house, when you appeared to leave me to my fate … Your ‘goodwill’ has never produced me one hundred pounds, and the books which you said ‘were you upon your deathbed, as my friend, you would advise me to take,’ will prove a considerable loss. (SS I, 234–235)

Despite the hostility between Murray and Miller, and the scale of the expense, Murray’s move to Albemarle Street was as advantageous as he hoped. As the Quarterly increased in circulation and influence it was convenient to have a location nearer his editor and principal contributors. The rooms upstairs were also needed to accommodate his growing family; since the arrival of John Murray III, Annie had given birth to two girls, Christina and Hester.5 Initially, Murray had intended the upstairs drawing room to be entirely under his wife’s ‘exclusive command’. Instead, it became ‘the centre of literary friendship and intercommunication at the West End’ 103

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(SS I, 264). What the drawing room represented is well described by Murray in a letter to his half-brother Archy: My House is excellent – it would surprise you – and I transact all my departments of business in an elegant library, which my Drawing room becomes during the morning where I am in the habits of seeing Persons of the very highest rank … such as – Canning – Frere – Mackintosh – Southey – Campbell – Walter Scott – Mad de Stael – Gifford – Croker – Barrow – Lord Byron &c &c leading thus the most delightful life with the means of prosecuting my business with the highest honour and emolument.6

Murray assured Archy that he was ‘not far from the top’ in his profession, ‘above Grub Street – Paternoster Row & Trash’, and connected with writers of ‘celebrity’.7 His growing influence was concisely described by Byron, who wrote to Francis Hodgson that ‘Murray has grown great’ (BLJ III, 7). Murray’s status as an establishment publisher was confirmed by his being made official bookseller to the Admiralty and Board of Longitude in May 1813. This appointment, which he had gained through his association with John Barrow of the Admiralty, meant that Murray would publish the Navy List on a monthly basis. As Murray’s business began to thrive, the gatherings in his drawing room became famed amongst fashionable literary society. A contemporary described the conditions necessary to be granted access to the publisher’s inner sanctum: To insure a passport to the table of Mr Murray, three things are necessary; first that the party be an author of some celebrity; secondly, that he be an unexceptionable Tory; and thirdly, that he be, to a greater or less extent, patronised by the aristocracy.8

This assessment gives us a good idea of how Murray and his circle were perceived. The gatherings at Albemarle Street had an air of exclusivity about them, and Murray had reached a level of success where it was perceived that if he undertook the publication of a work, ‘the authors’ fame was secured’ (SS I, 133). Despite his government connections and conservative leanings, several poets were tempted by the thought of what Murray’s commercial acumen could do for their works. John Keats wrote that he once almost made up his mind ‘[t]o mo[r]tgage a Poem to Murray’, but decided not to as his reputation was ‘very low’ and he was convinced that Murray would not negotiate his ‘bill of intellect’.9 The editor of Keats’s letters records that for Keats, such a thought must have seemed like ‘a particularly distasteful kind of prostitution’.10 Some years later, when Murray was 104

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Fig. 5 Drawing Room at Fifty Albemarle Street. Watercolour by L. Werner c. 1850. John Murray Collection.

at the height of his power, William Wordsworth asked Samuel Rogers to explore the possibility of Murray publishing a multi-volume edition of Wordsworth’s works. The poet wrote to Rogers in 1825, ‘Month after month elapses and I receive no answer from the grand Murray’. Wordsworth persuaded himself that the publisher was ‘too great a Personage for any one but a Court, an Aristocratic or most fashionable Author to deal with’.11 Such was the influence of the publisher that Charles Lamb described Albemarle Street as ‘John Murray Street’ and Thomas Moore wrote that it was a fortunate author who was ‘ta’en by Murray’s self in tow’.12 Byron’s friends were less intimidated by the ‘grand Murray’. Never one to let the publisher forget that he was ultimately a tradesman profiting from the works of authors, Hobhouse records that he was welcomed into the daily ‘assembly … of Quarterly and other wits’ ‘as an author or a gentleman, or more as a friend of Lord Byron, whose works are Murray’s income’.13 105

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As Murray moved from Fleet Street to Albemarle Street, literally towards a more fashionable and wealthy part of London and figuratively towards a more fashionable and wealthy book-buying public, he reflected that his new location was ‘peculiarly favourable for the dissemination of any work of eminence among the fashionable & literary part of the Metropolis’ (LJM, 28). As Byron wrote to congratulate his publisher and ‘rejoice’ that they would be ‘nearer neighbours’, he instructed Murray to ‘have a care of glutting ye. public, who by this time ha[ve] enough of C[hilde] H[arold]’ (BLJ II, 234). Byron had begun to worry about overexposure and in giving away the copyrights to his poems he affected disregard for the monetary value of his poetry. That this disdain was an affectation is clearly seen from a revealing letter written to Murray in September 1812. Since the publication of Childe Harold Byron had claimed that he did not think ‘publishing at all creditable’ and that he often felt ‘ashamed of it’ (BLJ II, 175). Despite this assertion, directly after informing his publisher that his ‘thermometer [was] sadly below the poetical point’ (BLJ II, 190), Byron wrote to Murray asking: ‘[w]hat will you give me or mine for a poem of 6 Cantos (when complete – no rhyme – no recompense) as like the last 2 as I can make them?’ Perhaps surprised at his own candour, Byron acknowledges in a postscript that the ‘last question is in the true style of Grub Street’ (BLJ II, 191). Murray responded to this enquiry stating that he would be ‘proud to give A Thousand Guineas’ for a new poem and that he would ‘ever gratefully remember the fame it would cast over [his] new establishment’ (LJM, 8). This exchange is a good example of Byron’s attitude towards his poetry during these years. He is at once attracted and repelled by the act of publishing and intrigued by his commercial success. He also worried that he was writing too quickly. Contemporary reviews of the Eastern tales, while generally positive, frequently chastised Byron for ‘rapidity of composition’ and warned him that if he did not change direction in his poetry, he would find himself ‘in the situation of a discarded lover, rejected by a mistress, whose indulgence he has abused by presumptuous or negligent caprice’ (RR, B: II, 629, 643). As we will see throughout this chapter, Byron’s correspondence and journals show the extent to which he was troubled by this sort of criticism. The letters between poet and publisher during these years reveal that while writing and publishing both men contemplated the heights that Byron’s fame had reached: Murray convinced it will never be surpassed, Byron thinking it will never last. The publisher repeatedly professes that Byron has attained a degree of fame that will never subside, always 106

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careful to direct the poet to see past ‘what superficially appears mere praise’ (LJM, 42). Murray used the opinions of his circle to further assure Byron of his growing reputation. William Gifford was particularly useful in this regard. While Gifford had an official role as Murray’s chief literary advisor, the publisher would often show Byron’s manuscripts to other members of his ‘illustrious Synod’; often acting following a specific request from Byron to ‘consult some of [his] literati’ (BLJ IV, 96). Capitalising on Byron’s regard for these men, particularly Gifford, Murray was in the habit of relaying their suggestions for amendments to Byron, who would frequently comply. Peter Graham has described this method of dealing with Byron as a ‘brilliant strategy’ on Murray’s part.14 The publisher was happy to act as mediator between Byron and Gifford and the tactic worked well for a number of years, so well in fact that when referring to differences of opinion regarding editorial decisions Byron proclaimed that ‘in all points of difference between Mr. Gifford & Mr. anybody else I shall abide by the former – if I am wrong – I can’t help it – but I would rather not be right with any other person’ (BLJ IV, 38). While Byron claimed that he had ‘not much weight’ with his publisher, he used his influence to persuade Murray to publish Coleridge’s Christabel and Kubla Khan and Leigh Hunt’s The Story of Rimini. Recommending Coleridge, Byron spoke to Murray ‘as a man of business’, adding ‘were I to talk as a reader or a Critic – I should say it was a very wonderful & beautiful performance – with just enough of fault to make its beauties more remarked & remarkable’ (BLJ IV, 331). Byron also borrowed manuscripts of new works to read and gave his opinion on their merits to the publisher. The poet’s favourable report on John Eagles’s The Journal of Llewellin Penrose, a Seaman (1815) allayed Murray’s fears that he might have paid too much for the copyright. While Byron engaged with Murray’s business in this way, their relationship began to progress beyond the bounds of a purely commercial association. As Fiona MacCarthy puts it, during this period the relations between Byron and Murray ‘were easing their way beyond the strict concerns of business’.15 Certainly, Murray’s letters to Byron of this period display his profound regard for the poet and we can see the relationship move towards friendship as the publisher took ‘an almost fatherly interest in Byron’s personal welfare’ (LJM, xviii). Byron wrote numerous letters to Murray from Newstead Abbey, where he spent the winter in 1813, and regularly sent the publisher game, cheese and cider (BLJ IV, 76). In October 1814 Murray visited Newstead on his way to Edinburgh. 107

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In a lengthy account to Annie, Murray described his feelings on being confronted with the ‘mere skeleton’ that was Newstead, a building ‘which is now fast crumbling to dust’. He felt the disappointment all the more keenly because his ‘notions had been raised to the romantic’ and left the Abbey with his ‘heart aching and full of melancholy reflections’. Murray was despondent that his ‘romantic picture’ had been ‘destroyed by the reality’.16 Encouraged by their increasing familiarity, Murray urged Byron to write during this period. He hurried the poet’s writing and correction of proofs to ‘oblige an impatient public’, wrote to ensure that ‘[his] Lordship [was] not idle’, suggested subject matter and, when Byron announced his marriage, proclaimed (only half-facetiously) that he would have no new poem that winter.17 In Murray’s letters to his wife, we can see the pleasure he took in his growing association with Byron. Addressing Annie (who was in Edinburgh and had failed to write as often as she promised) as ‘Dear Impudence’, Murray wrote: If I had not, luckily for you, received and read, after yours a letter from Lord Byron which concludes with the following PS I should most certainly have exercised all my literary wrath upon your audacious temerity … “P.S. – Mrs Leigh & the Children are very well – I have just read to her a sentence from your epistle – and her remark was ‘how well he writes’ – so you see you may set up as an author in person whenever you please” – no man is a prophet in his own country & thus it is that you are insensible to the value of my correspondence merely because you have the happiness of having me for a husband.18

Murray was often miserable when Annie visited her family in Edinburgh; he did not like to be by himself, and reminded his wife that she knew ‘perfectly well’ that he was ‘liable to bad spirits when left too much alone’.19 When he was not occupied with his business, or reading ‘all the Novels of tolerable reputation’ that he could find, he socialised with the authors who visited Albemarle Street and, somewhat improbably, Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron’s intense liaison with Caroline Lamb, the woman he memorably described as ‘the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous fascinating little being’, began in April 1812. Characterised by histrionic scenes, obsessive behaviour and a barely avoided elopement, the affair lasted for a few months before Byron began to tire of the ‘total want of common conduct’ from the woman who immortalised him as ‘mad-bad-and dangerous to know’ (BLJ II, 170–171). As Byron tried to distance himself from an increasingly public affair, Lady Caroline’s obsession continued and she became fixated with the idea of acquiring 108

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a miniature portrait of the poet by George Sanders. The portrait was at Albemarle Street as Murray had intended to use it as a model for an engraving for the fifth edition of Childe Harold. When Byron saw the engraved portrait by Henry Meyer he objected in the strongest possible terms and instructed Murray that ‘all the proofs be burnt, & the plate broken’ (BLJ II, 224). Murray wrote to Byron that he would not break the plate because he could not bring himself to ‘violate your Lordship even in in effigy’ (Caroline Lamb would burn Byron in effigy a few months later), and asked to be allowed to keep a copy of the engraving as a ‘mark of confidence’ (LJM, 18). Byron refused and forced Murray to destroy the engraved portrait. The only consolation for the publisher in ‘committing [the portrait] to the Flames’ was ‘seeing it ascend in sparkling brilliance to Parnassus’ (LJM, 27). Byron disliked the engraving but had a high opinion of the original, as did Caroline Lamb. In January 1813 she imitated Byron’s handwriting and went to Albemarle Street with a forged letter in order to obtain the portrait. Murray was fooled by the authentic looking signature and gave her the miniature. Byron was horrified at the deception by ‘that little maniac’ and wrote to advise his publisher that the woman who ‘imposed’ upon him was a ‘delinquent’ from ‘one of the first families in this kingdom’ (BLJ III, 15, 11). He instructed Murray to ‘be more cautious in future & not allow anything of mine to pass from your hands without my seal as well as signature’ (BLJ III, 10–11). Describing the act to several correspondents as an act of ‘flat burglary’, Byron wrote to Lady Melbourne that ‘Murray is in amaze at the whole transaction & writes in a laughable consternation – I presume she got it by flinging his own best bound folios at his head’ (BLJ III, 12). Many of Murray’s letters of this period have not survived, but from subsequent correspondence we can surmise that Caroline did not have to throw books at the publisher to get what she wanted. In fact, following this incident they began a friendship that has been described as ‘one of the strangest in literary history’.20 Byron was at Albemarle Street on the day Caroline Lamb summoned Murray to meet her properly for the first time. Fortunately, we do not have to imagine what Byron felt at this moment, as he relayed it, in detail, to Lady Melbourne: Yesterday to my utter astonishment – in marches Miss W. – (I was present) & says in a tone more audible than requisite – “Mr M[urray] Ly. C[aroline] L[amb] desires you will call tomorrow at – God knows when –” – The man bowed & promised acquiescence – he did not know that she was the picture woman – What was I to do? – if I said “don’t go” to a person who knew

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay nothing of her – & who dreamed only of an order for books &c. he would have thought it very singular that I should forbid the banns between him & his anticipated profits … The room being full I thought it best to say nothing. – This morning he saw her & of course recognized the respectable pilferer. (BLJ III, 17)

Over the coming months, Murray acted as a confidant to Lady Caroline. She constantly beseeched him for news of Byron, and by the following November described the publisher as ‘so much my friend’.21 The letters are confidential, often conspiratorial in tone, and discuss Byron, the latest publications and Caroline’s plans for her own literary career. The depth their friendship had reached is evidenced by a letter of February 1814, where Caroline writes: You may judge by my writing thus openly whether I have confidence in you – indeed I have & I feel secure that you will never repeat one word which I have said … & make as great a secret of my writing to you as I do of your writing to me.22

Murray was regularly invited to shoot and fish at Brocket Hall, Lady Caroline’s residence, and she even kept a room ready especially for him.23 Evidently, Byron saw the convenience in having Murray absorb Caroline’s attention (she wrote to the publisher ‘did not the Giaour tell me always to ask you’), but the poet would surely have been displeased if he had known the depth of their friendship, particularly as Murray often showed Caroline manuscripts of Byron’s latest poems.24 Once he became aware of this practice Byron forbade Murray from sending anything to Caroline. In 1816 he was unequivocal about this matter, writing to the publisher: ‘I wished to have seen you to scold you – really you must not send anything of mine to Lady CL – I have often sufficiently warned you on this topic – you do not know what mischief you do by this’ (BLJ V, 67). Murray paid no attention; in later years he would loan Caroline Lamb the manuscript of Byron’s memoirs. Although he denied having done so to Hobhouse, he spoke ‘looking red as fire and turning away his head’.25 As with most of his correspondence, Murray wrote less to Caroline than she did to him; her letters often reproach him for neglect. While Murray certainly enjoyed the relationship it must have been a difficult situation for him to manage. When the publisher wrote to his wife to inform her of Byron’s impending marriage, he reported that Byron described Lady Caroline as ‘the fiend who interrupted all his projects’ (there is no record of what Annie felt about her husband being confidant 110

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to this ‘fiend’). Murray went on to relate that Byron told him he thought Lady Caroline ‘was abroad & to his tormented astonishment he finds her not only in England but – in London’.26 This might have been a shock to Byron, but it cannot have been a surprise to Murray, who had dined at Brocket Hall a few weeks before. Leslie Marchand surmised that Murray was ‘under her spell and was frequently torn between loyalty to Byron and pity for Caroline’, and that Murray’s status as her confidant was ‘embarrassing’.27 One has only to imagine what Murray felt when he received the following letter about Byron’s marriage to see that Marchand was probably right: – I really believe that when that day comes, I shall buy a pistol at Mantons & stand before the Giaour & his legal wife & shoot myself, saying … as I must not live for him I will die – … I shall idolize that Lady Byron but do not you prefer her to me – you will, because the Law will uphold her … if you knew how good I once was how sorry you would be for me now … oh that Lady Byron, how I feel secure that you will prefer her ten hundred times to me – every one will!28

Lady Caroline certainly cultivated Murray’s acquaintance as a way to keep close to Byron; however, her correspondence shows that the relationship with Murray was also an outlet which enabled her to keep up to date with news of the literary world, to discuss books she had read and to ponder her plans for her own literary career; Murray published her novel Ada Reis in 1823. Not every letter is as theatrical as that quoted above, and Murray and Caroline clearly bonded over their respective relationships with the temperamental Byron. Early on in their correspondence Caroline warned Murray about Byron’s changeability: … you have known him as a friend as a Patron – I knew him as more – were he now to turn your foe – to laugh at you openly – to make you his jest his scorn – it would wound you … – let others beware – by my fate – whoever they are they could not have been more flattered more courted more lov’d – apparently – whoever they are they cannot have been more cruelly undeceived.29

She also consoled the publisher when Byron was irritable with him, reminding Murray that he was the poet’s ‘friend & he has but few real friends do you soothe him & try not to offend him – he will get over all this’.30 Her biographer writes that Murray ‘managed to find just the right note of response to Caroline’s moods’ and beyond any connection with Byron, she ‘genuinely liked him’. Their relationship became so close 111

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that as Byron’s publisher, Murray ‘no longer could allow his right hand to know what his left hand was doing’.31 Byron’s affair with Caroline had taken place at the height of his fame, following the publication of Childe Harold. Worried about what he perceived to be the overexposure of his work, Byron declared ‘the days of Authorship are over with me altogether’ (BLJ III, 7). Nevertheless he soon began his next work, inspired by his travels in the East. In writing exotic adventure stories Byron appealed to two of the most fashionable trends in Romantic literature. Firstly, he contributed to the vogue for verse narratives such as those made popular by Walter Scott and Robert Southey; secondly, he was jumping on what Nigel Leask has called ‘the bandwagon for “oriental” poetry’.32 Since the publication of Antoine Galland’s Arabian Nights Entertainment in 1704, literature set in the East had proven extremely popular with the eighteenth-century reading public; Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia (1759), Oliver Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (1762) and William Beckford’s Vathek (1786) were especially admired. The scholarship of Sir William Jones was particularly influential for Romantic writers, notably his seminal Essay on the Poetry of the Eastern Nations (1772). Jones was a leading scholar of Eastern languages and literature and co-founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. In his Essay he praised Hindu and Persian poetry and called for contemporary scholars and poets to embrace the East as a source of imaginative inspiration. He claimed that if Eastern languages were studied in British universities, … a new and ample field would be opened for speculation … we should be furnished with a new set of images and similitudes; and a number of excellent compositions would be brought to light, which future scholars might explain, and future poets might imitate.33

This call for a new direction in poetry was responded to by numerous poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, including Southey, Byron and Moore, who formed the core of the ‘canon’ of Romantic Orientalism. Jones’s acquisitive, materialistic tone, particularly his emphasis on ‘speculation’, as if the East were an imaginative gold mine, was echoed by Byron as he urged Moore to Stick to the East; – the oracle, Staël, told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing but S **’s [Southey’s] unsaleables, – and these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions … the public are orientalizing, and pave the path for you. (BLJ III, 101)

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Such unashamedly mercantile language may perhaps account for Byron’s subsequent distaste for his Eastern tales. As Leask argues, a letter like this shows him in the manner of a ‘Levantine or East India merchant who has tapped a lucrative source of raw materials … which he feels will make a splash on the home market’.34 Loosely based on an incident from his travels, The Giaour was the first of the tales. Byron began The Giaour towards the end of 1812. Abandoning Spenserian stanzas, which he considered inappropriate for verse narratives, Byron wrote The Giaour as a series of fragments to construct a tale that is told from different points of view.35 Several narrators, including the poet/translator, a Turkish fisherman, a monk and the Giaour himself, relate the narrative of the poem from their differing and subjective standpoints. Robert Gleckner describes the effect as akin to ‘a piece of sculpture surrounded by a number of viewers, each of whom sees it and interprets it in his own light’.36 The poem is Byron’s most structurally complex work as ‘what is regarded as the complete work is really the original poem covered with seven layers of accretion’.37 Jerome McGann has offered the persuasive argument that the organising principle of the poem is in fact that of a ballad-singer ‘who assumes different roles at different moments in his performance but who is himself the source of the work’s final consistency’.38 The story is made up of various fragments, and time moves between past and present creating a kind of montage effect. Unable to approach in a linear fashion, the reader is left to make sense of the fragments and imagine the gaps in the narrative; new information would become available as new editions of the poem were published. Once pieced together, the story is straightforward. The plot concerns a mysterious Venetian, known to the Muslims as ‘the Giaour’ (infidel), who falls in love with Leila, the slave of the Turkish ruler Hassan. On discovery of her infidelity, Hassan orders her to be executed: sewn in a sack and thrown into the sea. Consumed by a desire for revenge, the Giaour ambushes Hassan and kills him. Stricken with grief, the Giaour retreats to a monastery where the recollections of his deeds torture him. As with Childe Harold, Byron drew on his travels. While in Greece, returning from Piraeus, he encountered a procession of soldiers marching towards the shore. Having approached the party, Byron found that they were about to execute a young girl for adultery in the same manner he would later describe in The Giaour. Byron knew the girl and having threatened to shoot the guards, managed to persuade the governor, probably through bribery, to release her.39 Deeply affected by this 113

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incident, Byron recorded his wonder that he ever managed to write the poem and maintained that it was ‘icy even to recollect’ the events (BLJ III, 230). Concealing the factual basis for the narrative, Byron invented a fictional provenance and claimed that he had heard the story ‘by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story tellers who abound in the Levant’ (CPW III, 423). He attributed the breaks in the narrative to his own failure of memory; McGann facetiously wonders if readers were to assume that Byron ‘recalled additional snatches of the original lay’ as each new edition was published.40 The reticence towards publication that had characterised his initial feelings towards the first two cantos of Childe Harold resurfaced with The Giaour as Byron instructed Murray to print only fifteen copies, which he intended to circulate amongst his friends. The first version of the poem, which Murray printed in March 1813, contained 453 lines; Byron continued to add to the text and eventually consented to publication. The first edition, consisting of 684 lines, was published on 5 June 1813. Writing to his publisher claiming that the ‘general horror of fragments’ made him ‘tremulous for the “Giaour”’, Byron made it clear to Murray that it was he who persuaded him to publish a poem he had not intended for sale: ‘you would publish it – I presume by this time to your repentance – but as I consented – whatever be it’s fate I won’t now quarrel with you’ (BLJ III, 62). Byron reiterated this sentiment in a letter to Edward Clarke, stating that ‘M[urra]y has thought proper at his own peril & profit if there be any to publish it – contrary to my original intention’ (BLJ III, 63). This reluctance could perhaps be attributed to nervousness regarding the poem’s ability to replicate the success of Childe Harold, but it does not take much effort to see Byron’s stance as posturing. Far from there being a ‘horror’ of the form, the fragment was one of the most popular and fashionable modes of writing in the Romantic period. There is no doubt that Byron was aware of this; in fact, he had been inspired by Samuel Rogers’s highly successful Voyage of Columbus (1813). Byron’s choice to write a fragment was praised by reviewers, particularly Francis Jeffrey, who was sure that ‘the greater part of polite readers would now no more think of sitting down to a whole epic, than to a whole ox’ (RR, B: II, 842). In claiming that Byron ‘accommodated himself to the perpetual hurry of the days we live in’, reviewers explicitly acknowledged the extent to which the poet was writing for a consumer public (RR, B: II, 572). Playing on the fascination with fragments and ruins, The Giaour was a success waiting to happen; it 114

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was a poem that was, in the words of one reviewer, ‘constituted for popularity’ (RR, B: II, 848). Byron’s travels gave the poem authority as he provided rich portraits of exotic landscapes and details of local customs and language. The notes to the poem reinforce the expertise of the poet and Byron was proud of the accuracy of his descriptions, although he did rely in part on Barthelmi d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale (1697) and Samuel Henley’s notes to William Beckford’s Vathek (1784). Reviewers were quick to praise the natural quality of the verse, George Ellis echoing the prevailing sentiment by stating that ‘every image is distinct and glowing, as if it were illuminated by its native sunshine’ (RR, B: V, 2027). As with Childe Harold, the knowledge that Byron had actually seen the landscape he described was a factor in the success of the poem. Murray reminded him of his originality in this regard by reporting a conversation with Gifford about the fifth edition of The Giaour. He wrote to Byron describing how Gifford had been delighted with the ‘descriptions of eastern Manners’ because ‘all that has been hitherto attempted was done without actual knowledge’ (LJM, 42). When Murray informed his editor that Thomas Moore was writing an Eastern tale, Gifford replied that ‘Moore … will do only what has been already done’ (LJM, 42). Byron’s ‘actual knowledge’ was valued by the poet himself even above the quality of the poetry: ‘I don’t care one lump of Sugar for my poetry – but for my costume – and my correctness on those points … I will combat lustily’ (BLJ III, 165). This was acknowledged by Moore, who was working on Lallah Rookh when The Giaour was published. While Moore was generous in his praise of the poem, perhaps a little gratified that the epigraph was taken from Irish Melodies, he confessed to being ‘down-hearted’ about the publication and admitted that Byron’s ‘invasion’ of the East would lead to the field being ‘over-run with clumsy adventurers’ and imitators.41 Moore could not have known that Byron himself would overrun the field almost single-handedly. As Byron continued to add to The Giaour, Murray continued to publish new editions, evidently delighted with a poem he called a ‘series of gems’ (LJM, 39). In complete contrast to the later Eastern tales, many of which would be completed in less than two weeks, the composition of The Giaour continued over almost a year. Byron seemed unable to resist writing his ‘snake of a poem – which has been lengthening its rattles every month’ (BLJ III, 100). His imagining the poem as a ‘snake’ is echoed in a later comment where he asks Murray to suspend the proofs as he had been ‘bitten again’ (BLJ III, 125). This metaphor has often 115

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been cited to suggest that Byron considered himself compelled to write. It is a notion reinforced by a later reflection in Byron’s journal, where he describes his reasons for writing: To withdraw myself from myself (oh that cursed selfishness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all; and publishing is also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself. (BLJ III, 225)

It is noteworthy that Byron extends his impulse to write to include a compulsion to publish; a ‘continuance’ of his desire to turn from his own thoughts and one that implicitly includes Murray. The image of the mind recoiling upon itself is present in a striking image from The Giaour, the description of the scorpion surrounded by fire: The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes, Is like the Scorpion girt by fire, In circle narrowing as it glows The flames around their captive close, Till inly search’d by thousand throes, And maddening in her ire, One sad and sole relief she knows, The sting she nourish’d for her foes, Whose venom never yet was vain, Gives but one pang, and cures all pain, And darts into her desperate brain. – So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like Scorpion girt by fire. (ll. 421–434)

The scorpion can either live surrounded by fire or turn its deadly sting upon itself. Although Byron disdains writing and affects contempt for publishing, he cannot stop himself. Images of being trapped proliferate throughout the Eastern tales. The Giaour is imprisoned by the recollection of his deeds and, in an image that Jerome Christensen likens to Byron’s status as a commercial writer, Conrad from The Corsair is held captive by the Pacha Seyd. Referring to this paradoxical situation, Christensen advances the theory that ‘Conrad represents the literary character who cannot quit the writing he has started, Seyd stands in for the publisher who tortures the writer into continued production’.42 While not forcing the matter, Murray consistently and repeatedly encouraged Byron to write, principally by reinforcing the extent of his reputation. In persuading Byron to publish poems on his terms, terms intended to maximise the consumer appeal of the poem, Murray forced Byron to 116

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confront the reality of his position as a poet writing for a commercial reading public. Byron reflected on this fact in his journal, reporting that ‘Murray has had a letter from his brother Bibliopole of Edinburgh, who says “he is lucky in having such a poet” – something as if one was a pack-horse, or “ass, or anything that is his”’ (BLJ III, 238). The image of the scorpion is a useful analogy for Byron’s situation, a metaphor that speaks of the inability to escape a situation except by terminating it completely. Effectively, the choice is whether to refuse participation in the Albemarle Street machine, or stay and inhabit ‘a luxurious prison that is the site of theoretically endless fascination, a factory for the practically endless manufacture of passion’.43 The allure of staying in the ‘prison’ was the acclaim of his readers and ever increasing celebrity, despite the fact that Byron was sceptical about whether it would last. As we have seen, Byron’s early poetry dealt with the transience of fame and questioned the possibility of literary immortality; The Giaour followed this trend by engaging with both themes. Through the method of composition, publication and the invented provenance, The Giaour materially investigates the manner by which a tale is transmitted through oral culture and is thus implicitly concerned with popularity. Popular literature was often subjected to ridicule by critics who accused its authors of pandering to the present fashion instead of thirsting after lasting fame. Such texts were characterised as transient and ephemeral. Reminding his readers that ‘Literary immortality is now let on short leases’, William Hazlitt described much modern literature as ‘fluttering, fickle, vain … impatient for applause; [it] pants for the breath of popularity; renounces eternal fame for a newspaper puff’.44 Hazlitt echoed one of the most extended condemnations of popularity as a standard for critical worth, William Wordsworth’s Essay Supplementary to the Preface (1815). Written at the height of the mania for the Eastern tales, Wordsworth set out to ‘distinguish between wonder and legitimate admiration’ and prove that present popularity was no guarantee of future fame.45 Calling for an end to ‘the senseless iteration of the word popular’, he wrote of how ‘numerous productions have blazed into popularity, and have passed away, leaving scarcely a trace behind them’.46 Byron would later refute the elder poet’s argument that ‘no great poet ever had immediate fame’ by partially attributing it to envy, stating that ‘William Wordsworth is not quite so much read by his contemporaries as might be desirable’. Since Byron took the view that the ‘very existence of a poet previous to the invention of printing depended upon his present 117

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popularity’ (CMP, 108), it is appropriate that The Giaour took the form of an oral narrative recorded by a translator with selective memory. In order to investigate the process of transmission, Byron proceeded to complicate the text by producing a myriad of different versions. In what was surely a marketing dream for Murray, readers could potentially buy seven different editions of the same poem. It is possible to see The Giaour as an example of the materially unstable qualities of a text; it is also possible to see it as a brazenly commercial venture by poet and publisher, clearly anticipating modern sales and marketing techniques in which customers are persuaded to buy an updated version of something they already own. Despite the high price of almost 5 shillings and the fact that no one could pronounce the title, The Giaour went to fourteen editions by 1815 and sold approximately 13,000 copies (CPW III, 413).47 Who were Byron’s readers? Although pirated editions would make his work available to the masses in inexpensive formats, it is safe to assume that Murray’s high prices initially restricted Byron’s readership to a wealthy audience. William St Clair’s summary of the men and women who had bought the opening cantos of Childe Harold and the tales gives us a good idea of Murray’s clientele: They were rich and mostly members of the landed classes. They were in favour of strong government, the royal family, high grain prices, and established religion. They were against democracy, rights of women, reform of parliament, reform in general.48

Although Murray’s prices were in line with the other major publishing houses – approximately 5 shillings per volume unbound – they were ‘sufficiently sensational’ to limit the readership to those who could afford the opulent editions.49 The Eastern tales were beautifully produced in luxurious editions with expensive paper and excellent printing. The lavish nature of their production was such that Peter Manning likens the books to ‘handsome cultural artefact[s]’.50 Since paper was an expensive commodity, a sure sign of extravagance was the presence of a wide margin. Murray’s editions were noted for the generous margins, one reviewer comparing the presentation of The Giaour to ‘a rivulet of text flowing through a meadow of margin’ (RR, B: V, 2134). Readers in this period would have bought their books unbound, in paper wrappers. They would then have placed an order for it to be rebound in leather, to have the pages trimmed and often to have the paper pressed again. ‘Hot-pressed’ quickly became a term of derision, intended to evoke the 118

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increasingly consumer orientated nature of literature; tellingly, Byron once described himself as ‘a hot-pressed darling’.51 While the books were being rebound, readers would often request the insertion of illustrations. The obvious potential for illustrations to accompany the graphic descriptions in Byron’s poetry was not lost on Murray, who marketed the poet’s image with engravings of portraits available to his customers. In 1814 Murray published twelve engravings from designs by Thomas Stothard to illustrate Byron’s work. The illustrations cost between 18 and 42 shillings. Purchasing the text was just the first step in owning an edition of Byron; the cumulative expense of binding and illustrations made the poems costly acquisitions. We can see why a reviewer for The Satirist was shocked by ‘[f]our shillings and sixpence for forty-one octavo pages of poetry!’ and concluded that ‘[t]he noble lord appears to have an aristocratical solicitude to be read only by the opulent’ (RR, B: V, 2134). In fact, as may be expected, Byron had nothing to do with fixing the prices of his books and his reaction to this review reveals his displeasure at the exorbitant cost. Making reference to the critique in The Satirist, Byron told his publisher that ‘[o]ne part belongs’ to him, stating that the price was ‘unconscionable – but you have no conscience’ (BLJ III, 70). Exhilarated with success, Murray was particularly keen for Byron to overtake Scott as the leading poet of the day. Byron’s tales were very much indebted to Scott’s earlier works, particularly Marmion (1808) and Rokeby (1813). Stuart Curran reminds us that the Mediterranean settings of the Eastern Tales ‘conceal how very similar Byron’s geography is to Scott’s … the same rough heroism asserting itself where law cannot reach, the same codes of vengeance, strong-willed women, and isolated men’.52 One contemporary reviewer of The Giaour even complained that it was far ‘too Walter-Scottish’ (RR, B: II, 520). The similarities were evident to readers and Murray was explicit about the fact that he intended Byron to compete with the most popular writer of the age. He wrote to Byron stating that he would be ‘delighted if [his] Lordship had a new Poem ready for publication about the same time (this month I believe) that Walter Scotts [sic] is expected’ (LJM, 27). The ensuing writing and publication of the Eastern tales saw Byron surpass Scott’s achievements, and he ‘ceded the field to Byron, gracefully exiting into prose’, where he was to enjoy spectacular success as a novelist.53 In a gesture that was symbolic both of their friendship and the triumph of Byron’s verse narratives, Scott presented Murray with an antique Turkish dagger as a present for the younger poet. Murray did not hesitate to 119

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inform Byron that Gifford had ‘completely settled in his mind [Byron’s] certain superiority to Scott’ as he possessed a ‘Genius of a higher order’ (LJM, 42). Considering that less than a month after receiving this letter Byron wrote in his journal that he considered Gifford to be the principal ‘monarch maker in poetry’, we must conclude that he was at least beginning to think of himself as the newly crowned king (BLJ III, 209). The composition of Byron’s next poem was the antithesis of the lengthy, accretive process of writing The Giaour. The Bride of Abydos was written in the evenings of the first week of November 1813, and the fair copy was completed by the 11th of that month. Byron used the speed of composition (‘scribbling’) to justify his claims that he only wrote to ‘wring [his] thoughts from reality’, and sent the manuscript to Gifford with the instructions that ‘[a] word to Mr. Murray will be sufficient – and send it … to the flames’ (BLJ III, 184, 161). Following advice from Richard Sharp and Samuel Rogers, Byron wrote to Murray regarding the publication of the poem and gave instructions that it was not to be issued as a separate publication. Instead, he wanted to place it at the end of new editions of The Giaour in order that it might ‘steal quietly into the world’ (BLJ III, 163). Murray was naturally loath to give up the opportunity of a new publication in its own right and set about persuading Byron to consent to separate publication. His first way of showing how highly he thought of the poem was to offer Byron 1,000 guineas for both The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, writing that the sum was intended to reflect that ‘my estimation of your talents in my character as a man of business – is not much under my admiration of them, as a man’ (LJM, 48). Just in case the significance of such a large amount had been lost on Byron, Murray, in his next letter congratulated him on surpassing Scott in terms of copyright. The tactic was deliberate and effective. The extravagant sum astonished Byron, who recorded his feelings in his journal: Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for the “Giaour” and the “Bride of Abydos”. I won’t – it is too much, though I am strongly tempted, merely for the say of it. No bad price for a fortnight’s (a week each) what? – the gods know – it was intended to be called Poetry. (BLJ III, 212)

Although the knowledge that he could command such money reinforced Byron’s distaste for the commercial element of his poetry, he was evidently pleased to surpass Scott in monetary terms. Murray then proceeded to give the manuscript to his advisors and report their favourable opinion to Byron, entreating the poet to let him ‘print it separately’ (LJM, 31). Byron eventually consented, although he remained sceptical regarding 120

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the merits of a poem he had written so quickly, writing to Lord Holland that ‘the whole of the Bride cost me four nights – and you may easily suppose that I can have no great esteem for lines that can be strung as fast as minutes’ (BLJ III, 168). Byron’s low opinion of his work was not reflected in the sales figures, which outstripped those of The Giaour. The Bride of Abydos sold approximately 6,000 copies in the first month and nearly 13,000 by the end of the year. With the publication of a second Eastern tale in the midst of new editions of The Giaour, Byron was becoming heavily identified with the genre, to the extent that an anonymously written drama performed at Drury Lane was ascribed to him solely because of the Oriental theme.54 Aware that the publicity could not harm him, he wrote to Murray that it was a good advertisement for the ‘Eastern Stories’ as it filled the public’s head with ‘glitter’ (BLJ III, 175). This remark is revealing of Byron’s feelings towards his work: written easily, produced quickly, the tales served the dual purpose of entertaining readers and enabling the author to ‘take refuge in “imaginings”’ (BLJ III, 184). On 18 December 1813, little over two weeks after the publication of The Bride of Abydos, Byron began The Corsair. Unable to ‘empty [his] head of the East’, he wrote the first of three cantos in four days and finished the poem in two weeks (BLJ III, 160). An indication of Byron’s growing misgivings regarding the tales is found in a letter to Moore where he describes the poems as ‘experiment[s] on public patience’ (BLJ III, 184). To ‘rescue’ himself ‘from a possible imputation that [he] had other objects than fame in writing so frequently’, Byron gave the copyright of the poem to Robert Charles Dallas (BLJ IV, 14–15). This allocation of the copyright of The Corsair was the first major difficulty in Byron and Murray’s relationship. The source of the problem was the mutual dislike between Murray and Dallas. Their relationship had deteriorated to the point where Byron described them as having a ‘ feud’ (BLJ III, 201). Dallas felt excluded (primarily financially) by Murray following the commercial success of Childe Harold, and made a series of attempts to extract money from the publisher, citing promises and agreements of which there was no record.55 When Dallas wrote to Byron asking him for monetary assistance for his nephew Charles, who needed money to join his regiment in Ireland, Byron presented Dallas with the copyright of The Corsair. In his later account, Dallas presented this matter as indicative of a weakening of the connection between Byron and Murray: the current of satisfaction which had run thus high and thus strong in favour of his publisher, ebbed with equal rapidity; and became so low, that

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Dallas’s version of events claims that Byron offered him the copyright with the stipulation that he was ‘fully at liberty to publish it with any bookseller [he] pleased’ and, moreover, that he would prefer it to be published ‘by some other bookseller’. The reason for this, Dallas claimed, was that Byron had been offended by Murray having ‘the assurance to give me his advice as to writing, and to tell me that I should outwrite myself’.57 When he discovered that Dallas held the copyright, Murray reacted hysterically. He wrote a frantic, emotional letter to Byron revealing his feelings of deep attachment and the despair he would feel at losing Byron (and his copyrights): I feel nearly as little able to write to you, as I was to speak … I never felt so bitterly unhappy … – If you really meant to give the Stab, you gave, to my feelings, may God, harden my heart against man, for never, never, will I attach myself to another … (LJM, 65)

Byron quickly clarified that he had not intended the poem to be published by anyone else. Still, Murray described Byron’s decision to place him ‘at the mercy’ of Dallas as an ‘act of consummate Cruelty’, which is perhaps an indication that, as Nicholson suggests, the real source of his unhappiness was not that Byron would leave him for another publisher, but the fear that Dallas would not deal fairly with him (LJM, 66). This supposition is strengthened by a letter from Dallas to Byron where he writes ‘If I wished a triumph over Murray, you have given me such an opportunity as I might be proud to make use of, but I shall feel much more pleasure in showing you with what moderation I can use the power you have put in my hands’.58 Byron’s reply to Murray’s letter demonstrates that in his Recollections, Dallas misrepresented the situation. The poet wrote that he never had any intention to ‘annoy’ Murray, and thanked him for the ‘expressions of personal regard’, which he did ‘not lightly value’. Byron explained that he wanted to ensure that the public knew that whenever he availed of ‘profit arising from [his] pen’ it was not for his ‘own convenience’ (BLJ IV, 14–15). Byron’s letters to Murray of this period make it clear that there was no major difficulty between them at this time. Dallas’s report that Byron was annoyed that Murray had the temerity to advise him about writing and that he worried the poet might ‘outwrite’ himself certainly has a ring of truth, but I believe it is the case subsequent to 122

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the events regarding the allocation of the copyright to The Corsair. A week after this matter Byron wrote to Moore that ‘Mr. M[urray] … sometimes takes upon him the critic’ and that he put up with it ‘from astonishment’, and a month after this Murray relayed that ‘Giffords [sic] Critic heart … quaked for your fame’ when he heard that Byron was writing another poem (BLJ IV, 18; LJM, 72). As with most of Dallas’s Recollections, where they are not invented, they are misrepresented, and where they are not misrepresented they are deliberately misleading. It is with the knowledge of the later disagreements that Dallas described this situation as indicative of a serious rift between Byron and Murray. If the matter demonstrated anything, it was the extent to which Byron wanted to distance himself from the commercial elements of his poetry and the degree to which Murray felt a sense of ownership over Byron. Despite the reviewers’ pleas for Byron to ‘give the town a breathing time’, The Corsair was published little over two months after The Bride of Abydos (RR, B: II, 652). It was accompanied by a politically charged dedication to Thomas Moore in which Byron praised Moore’s fervent patriotism and speculated that his new work, Lallah Rookh, would be agreeable to him because ‘[t]he wrongs of your own Country, the magnificent and fiery spirit of her sons, the beauty and feeling of her daughters, may there be found’ (CPW III, 148). As well as celebrating Moore as ‘the poet of all circles – and the idol of his own’, Byron used the dedication to announce that The Corsair was ‘the last production with which [he would] trespass on public patience … for some years’ (CPW III, 149, 148). He also expressed his ‘amusement’ at the public identification of him with his protagonists, claiming that other poets are ‘quite exempted from all participation in the faults of [their] heroes’ (CPW III, 150). Beginning with a promise to abstain from publishing for a few years, the dedication clearly represents Byron’s answer to contemporary reviewers who had begun to seriously censure him for his repeated publications; even favourable reviews were offering the advice that ‘[t]he mind wearies with monotony, even though it be of excellence’ (RR, B: II, 951). The dedication to Moore troubled Murray, and he objected that it contained ‘too much about politics’ and would ‘disturb the political feeling’ (BLJ IV, 18, LJM, 70). Aside from Byron and Moore’s close friendship, the public expression of allegiance to the Irish poet and his cause ‘casts an interesting light on the oblique relationship between Byron’s own works and contemporary politics’ and as Moore was an infamous satirist of the Regent and government, it is perhaps 123

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Fig. 6 John Murray to Byron, 30 September 1813. JMA, MS. 43494.

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unsurprising that Murray asked Byron to revise the piece.59 Byron reported the publisher’s concerns to Moore: Mr. M[urray] … says, [the dedication] may do you harm – God forbid! – this alone makes me listen to him. The fact is, he is a damned Tory, and has, I dare swear, something of self, which I cannot divine, at the bottom of his objection. (BLJ IV, 18)

The basis of Murray’s objection was undoubtedly his wish not to have The Corsair associated with an outspoken satirist of the monarch and the government, although from the letter to Moore we can see that his manner of persuading Byron to revise it was to infer that the dedication might do his friend more harm than good. Byron compromised and composed an alternative, moderate dedication and decided that the choice should be Moore’s. Moore chose the original and Byron insisted on it accompanying his poem, writing to Murray that ‘the part your tory bile sickens at … should not be expunged’ and declaring that readers ‘who cannot swallow [must] chew the expressions on Ireland’ (BLJ IV, 32). The dedication to The Corsair was not the only supplementary material to the volume that caused Murray concern. The poem was originally published with six short poems, one of which was ‘To a Lady Weeping’ (alternatively titled ‘Sympathetic Address to a Young Lady’). Byron had written the eight-line poem in March 1812. The lady of the title is Princess Charlotte, and the subject of the poem was her fathers’ public betrayal of the Whig party at a banquet in Carlton House. The prince made a speech denouncing the party and proposing a coalition with the Tories, moving his daughter to tears at his disloyalty. The poem had appeared anonymously in the Morning Chronicle but, by reprinting it as part of the volume that contained The Corsair, Byron acknowledged his authorship and provoked a public outcry. Murray had strongly objected to the poem’s inclusion, but Byron was insistent, stating that he would not give up his ‘weeping lines’ (BLJ IV 37). He was heavily criticised and the publication provoked a ‘foaming torrent of abuse’ from the press (BLJ IV, 41–42).60 The Courier and The Morning Post were particularly indignant, the former describing the poem as ‘choice doggerel’ and the latter consigning Byron to the ‘galaxy of minor poets’ (LJM, 499, 484). The Morning Post took particular offence at what it perceived to be Byron’s impudence in engaging with political affairs, especially ‘Irish trash’, and advised him that while ‘it is innocent to write tales and travels in verse’, he should ‘not presume to meddle with politics’ (LJM, 484). In itself, this advice is revealing of a certain contemporary perception of the 126

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tales that is near to Byron’s reading of them: they were safe and enjoyable and not concerned with anything more than light entertainment; a view exemplified by Jane Austen’s comment to her sister, ‘I have read the Corsair, mended my petticoat, & have nothing else to do’.61 It is perhaps because of this that Byron, who had always wanted to make his mark on the political scene, was so fervent in his regard for ‘To a Lady Weeping’. Byron’s reaction to the uproar shows him becoming conscious of his fame in a new way. For two months his correspondence is preoccupied with the fact that eight lines ‘should have given birth … to 8000 including all that has been said & will be said on the subject!’ (BLJ IV, 81). He wrote an answer to The Courier addressing their criticism, and delighted in reporting the ‘vehement, unceasing, loud’ abuse to his friends (BLJ IV, 41, 51). A letter to Lady Melbourne reveals his astonishment at, and enjoyment of, the commotion: Did you ever know any thing like this? – at a time when peace & war – & Emperors & Napoleons – and the destinies of the things they have made of mankind are trembling in the balance – the Government Gazettes can devote half their attention & columns day after day to 8 lines written two years ago – & now republished only … I really begin to think myself a most important personage. (BLJ IV, 53)

Byron’s reaction shows his awareness of the power of publishing, his realisation of the disproportionate power of print and the fickle taste of the public. It was because of this that Murray’s decision to remove the lines from the next edition of The Corsair without his consent provoked another disagreement. It is not surprising that Murray would have resisted the publication of a poem containing the line ‘A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay’. He had previously declined to print Byron’s satire on the influence of the Royal family, The Waltz, even though it was to be published anonymously, and his opinion of the dedication to Moore displays his unwillingness for Byron to associate himself too overtly with liberal Whig politics. Consequently, without asking Byron’s opinion or permission, he removed the lines from the new edition of The Corsair and ‘transplanted’ them to the seventh edition of Childe Harold (LJM, 72). Byron reacted furiously against what he considered to be Murray’s ‘injudicious suppression’ and warned him not to ‘compromise’ his intentions ‘by anything which may look like shrinking’ (BLJ IV, 59). In a perceptive analysis of the situation, Peter Manning has cleared Murray of the supposition that his actions were motivated by politics.62 Predictably, they were due to what the publisher called his ‘sordid propensities’ (LJM, 79). Murray was not ‘in 127

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a fright’ as Byron thought; he simply moved the lines to a new edition of Childe Harold in order to make it sell (BLJ IV, 51). As Manning argues, ‘Murray, in short, was determined to ensure that a political furore became a commercial success’.63 The publisher wrote to Byron explaining that he had not acted to censor him, that his actions were ‘a ruse to give additional impetus to the poem’, and that he expected ‘to sell off the whole edition of “Childe Harold” just to get at it’ (LJM, 72–73). While Byron was tolerant at first, he soon changed his mind and asked Murray to replace the poems in the appendices to The Corsair as ‘the withdrawing the small poems from the Corsair (even to add to C[hil]de H[arol]d) looks like shrinking & shuffling’ (BLJ IV, 46). He was also mildly piqued that Childe Harold needed ‘some & such allotments to make him move off’ (BLJ IV, 46). Murray readily complied with his request, so the poem that had provoked such an outcry found itself printed in The Corsair, the new edition of Childe Harold and almost every newspaper that attacked it. The Corsair was Byron’s most commercially successful poem to date and has been remembered chiefly in accordance with Murray’s breathless report of ‘a thing perfectly unprecedented’: sales of 10,000 copies on the first day of publication (LJM, 72). The sales figures were such that one reviewer even abandoned the practice of ‘multiply[ing] extracts, as the poem is already in every body’s hands’, and Murray claimed that ‘You can not meet a man in the Street – who has not read or heard read the Corsair’ (RR, B: II, 958; LJM, 79). Following up on his ‘prefatory promise’ to abstain from writing, three days after the publication of The Corsair Byron wrote to Murray describing the poem as ‘our Finale’ and went on to explain that as his ‘rhyming propensity is quite gone’ he must end their association (BLJ IV, 45). Convinced of the defects of his tales, he wrote again the following day stating that he was glad to have ‘made up his mind to a temporary reputation’ (BLJ IV, 46). This action is consistent with Byron’s attitude around this period, particularly in light of his correspondence and his journal, and more specifically because of the preface to The Corsair. Jerome Christensen sees the preface as the moment where Byron ‘advertises his embarrassment’ to his readers and ‘confesses to have perverted his talents’.64 According to Christensen, this ‘confession’ was prompted by Byron’s realisation that reviewers had begun to question ‘the wisdom of his poetic enterprise’.65 The frequency of Byron’s publications was a topic for much debate amongst contemporary reviewers, and they often speculated on the motives behind the ceaseless appearance of new works. One reviewer wondered what drove Byron to ‘hurry his poems, 128

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prematurely into the world’ and concluded that as it was unlikely to be for ‘pecuniary advantage’, it must be a ‘goal of earthly immortality at which he pants to arrive’ (RR, B: II, 603). We must include Murray in this critique as although it was Byron who wrote quickly, it was the publisher who rushed editors, proof readers and printers to ‘hurry’ the production of Byron’s works. The time between Murray receiving proofs and the books being advertised for sale was often only a matter of weeks. In addition, the publisher’s decision to have small initial print runs as a prelude to multiple editions was designed to give the public the impression that Byron’s books would sell out almost as soon as they were put on sale. While Murray’s sales remained high, contemporary reviewers were alert enough to be suspicious of such strategies: … to those, who know how wonderful is the mystery of book-making, and with what zeal the great traffickers in literary property will exert themselves, when purchase has entitled them to possession … such will not be always led to conceive that new editions, announced in title-pages, are infallible signs of a rapid sale or a new impression. (RR, B: IV, 2290)

Barely two years after publication, Childe Harold had reached eight editions, and The Giaour was in its eleventh. St Clair has proven that many of these editions were in fact constructed from unsold earlier printings, ‘dinner left overs re-heated for next day’s lunch’.66 With this in mind, it seems fair to suggest that the reviewers were at least reacting in part to the torrent of publications as much as to the sameness of the Eastern tales. The similarity between the tales is frequently remarked on by reviewers, irritated that each new poem presented a familiar hero in a familiar setting with a different set of circumstances. One contemporary satirist later described them contemptuously as ‘Childe! Giaour! and Corsair! – names by which men call / Bad copies of a worse original’.67 Despite a modern ‘critical desire to impart the complexity always felt to be lacking in Byron’s texts’, many critics still admit that the tales ‘all tell much the same tragic, swashbuckling story’; in essence, ‘repetitions-withvariations’.68 In addition to becoming weary of the predictability of the poems, as much of the popular appeal of the Eastern Tales rested on the descriptive passages, reviewers felt that Byron had come to rely too heavily on these at the expense of the overall poetic quality of the work. The Critical Review advised Byron that he is ‘rich without tinsel’, and not to ‘imagine that tinsel is wealth’ (RR, B: II, 623). The reviewer for The Champion described Byron as a poet who ‘presumes on his popularity to become a downright scribbler’, and likened the effect to an artist who 129

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‘rubs in a few heads, all as exactly alike to each other as those that first appear on a painter’s canvas’ (RR, B: II, 524). The subject for the debate was neatly summarised by George Ellis of The Quarterly, who stated that reviewers had to decide [w]hether this tide of success has appeared to produce a beneficial or mischievous effect on the mind of the favoured poet; whether it has seduced him into negligence, or, excited him to greater exertion. (RR, B: V, 2012)

Byron struggled to decide as much himself. Writing to Thomas Moore, he admitted that he had begun to think his works ‘strangely overrated’ (BLJ IV, 77). He claimed that writing The Bride of Abydos in four days and The Corsair in ten was ‘humiliating’, as it proves ‘[his] want of judgement in publishing, and the public’s in reading things, which cannot have the stamina for permanent attention’ (BLJ IV, 77). Although he never said as much to Byron, Moore agreed with the assessment and believed that The Bride ‘would have been much finer if he had taken more time about it’.69 Byron associates writing quickly with inferiority because of the implicit commercial connotations. If his poems are not designed for ‘permanent attention’, then they must be written either for commercial gain or because of the poet’s ‘love of earthly fame’ (RR, B: II, 603). As the critics claimed that Byron displayed a lack of discernment in publishing inferior poetry, Byron simply counter-claimed that if ‘the public will read things written in that debauched measure – [it] is their own fault’ (BLJ III, 167). His attitude is reminiscent of Johnson’s remark on substandard literature: ‘we cannot wonder that, while readers could be procured, the authors were willing to continue it’.70 Throughout this period Byron repeatedly disdains his publications, yet is seemingly unable to stop writing. Clearly aware of this, Murray did not take the resolution that The Corsair was his last production for some years too seriously. He wrote that he would ‘confine himself to Cyder forever’ if Byron restrained from writing, and took it upon himself to suggest a subject for composition, offering the opinion that Napoleon’s abdication was ‘[a] Fine Subect [sic] for an Epic’ (LJM, 83, 89). Although he did not produce the epic Murray wanted, Byron wrote his Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte the next day. Conscious that he had violated a very public promise, he sent the poem to his publisher with the instruction that ‘[a]fter the resolution of not publishing – though it is a thing of little length & less consequence it will be better altogether if it is anonymous’ (BLJ IV, 94). Justifying his turnaround to Moore, 130

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he declared the existence of ‘a mental reservation in [his] pact with the public, in behalf of anonymes’ (BLJ IV, 100). On 17 February 1814 the Courier published an article which accused Byron of having ‘received and pocketed’ large sums of money for his work. The article explicitly charged Byron with a commercial motivation for writing, and used his association with Murray to make their point. Citing Byron’s earlier sneer at Murray in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (‘Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine / To yield thy Muse just half-a-crown a line?’), the article declared: is it not, we say, almost incredible, that this very Murray should have been so soon after selected, by this very Lord Byron, to be his own publisher? But what will our readers say, when we assure them, that not only was Murray so selected, but that this magnanimous young Lord has actually sold his works to this same Murray …71

Byron was infuriated, and wrote to Dallas that he had ‘never yet received nor wished to receive a farthing’ for any of his poetry (BLJ IV, 63). Dallas took it upon himself to write to the Morning Post to clarify that Byron ‘never received a shilling for any of his works’. While acknowledging his receipt of the copyrights of Childe Harold and The Corsair, he testified that with ‘respect to his two other poems, The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, Mr MURRAY, the publisher of them, can truly attest that no part of the sale of these has ever touched his hands, or been disposed of for his use’ (LJM, 500). Murray was annoyed by this because he had offered Byron a considerable amount of money for the copyrights to both these works. He wrote a strongly worded letter to Dallas, who immediately sent it to Byron, who wearily replied that he was ‘quite in the dark and & really confounded’ about the ongoing feud between Murray and Dallas (BLJ IV, 70). The essence of the dispute was that Murray disliked the implication that he was not paying fair value for copyrights to highly profitable works and Byron disliked the implication that he was receiving large sums of money for his poetry. In an important article Peter Cochran has proved that Byron’s repeated claim that he never received money for his work was disingenuous. Following an analysis of John Murray’s ledgers, and Byron’s bank account, Cochran concludes that ‘although the process was a complex and convoluted one, involving much posturing and prevarication on Byron’s part, and much patience and generosity on Murray’s, Byron in fact made a total of £3,850 from the poetry he published with John Murray prior to leaving for the continent in 1816’.72 Responding to the widespread reports of his inconsistency/authorial 131

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promiscuity, Byron wrote to Murray on 29 April to put an end to their association (BLJ IV, 107). Referring to The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, Byron released Murray from his contractual obligations and requested that ‘the advertisements be withdrawn – and the remaining copies of all destroyed’, adding that he was ‘perfectly satisfied & have every reason so to be with your conduct in all transactions between us as publisher and author’ (BLJ IV, 107–108). Sensing the seriousness of this ‘formidable’ letter in comparison with the previous dalliance with the idea that he would abandon writing, Murray wrote back stating that he would comply, although the consequence would be his ‘ruin & utter dejection of Spirits’ (LJM, 95). He pleaded with Byron to take ‘a few days to reflect upon a conduct which will occasion so much misery’, emphasising that ‘the fame of [Byron’s] Genius is invaluable to [him]’ (LJM, 95). As he never offered an explanation for his actions, we can only guess at what prompted Byron to write such a letter. Leslie Marchand speculates that Byron might have been ‘overcome by a revulsion against his poetic production brought on by some personal criticism’.73 We could offer several reasons for Byron’s sudden termination of the association; it is most likely due to a combination of his increasing unease at the commercial element in his association with Murray, derogatory criticism from the press and pressure in his personal life.74 Another reason is Byron’s suspicion that writing was fundamentally a worthless (and unmanly) occupation compared to politics, or a military career. In his journal entry for 24 November 1813, Byron wrote that he thought the preference of writers to agents – the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others – a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness. Who would write, who had anything better to do? “Action – action – action” – said Demosthenes: “Actions – actions,” I say, and not writing, – least of all rhyme. (BLJ III, 220)

Despite his serious reservations about writing, once Byron received Murray’s letter and realised the effect it would have on him, he immediately withdrew his request, instructing the publisher to ‘go on as usual’ (BLJ IV, 112). Byron’s letter to Murray made it clear that he had been serious in his request to suppress his future publications, but he had not wished ‘to interfere with the convenience of others’; although he promised to tell him ‘the reason of this apparently strange resolution’, he never did (BLJ IV, 112). After his unexplained attempt to break from Murray, Byron began writing the fourth of his tales, Lara, on 15 May 1814. The composition was as rapid as the previous tales and it was finished by 12 June. Byron 132

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later told Murray he had written the poem ‘while undressing after coming home from balls and masquerades’ (BLJ IX, 168). Having made a fair copy of his manuscript between 14 and 17 of June, it took Byron until the middle of July to correct the proofs (CPW III, 452–453). He had been angered by the number of errors in The Corsair (referring at one stage to the ‘conspiracy’ between Murray and the printer) and did not want any mistakes in Lara (BLJ IV, 83). The publication of Lara was the cause of much disagreement between poet and publisher, mainly because of Byron’s habitual reticence and procrastination. Nervous about how yet another publication would be received by critics who had already begun to condemn his vacillation, Byron informed Murray not to ‘be in any hurry’ with the publication (BLJ IV, 144). It was decided that Lara should be published anonymously in a volume together with Samuel Rogers’s Jacqueline. ‘Larry and Jacky’, as Byron called them, were to constitute his and Rogers’s ‘joint invasion of the public’ (BLJ IV, 156, 138). Despite Byron’s instruction to delay publication, advertisements for the poems, written by Hobhouse, appeared in early August.75 Byron had been out of London and wrote three times to Murray to protest without receiving a reply. Exasperated, he addressed his next letter to Murray’s executors, expressing his surprise ‘at the previous neglect of the deceased’ (BLJ IV, 154). Pressurised by the advertisements, which announced an imminent sale, Byron finally relented and Murray went ahead with the publication on 5 August; Murray paid Byron £700 for the copyright to the poem. Although Lara was published anonymously, the advertisement suggested that readers might regard the poem as ‘a sequel’ to The Corsair, thus removing any doubt as to its authorship (CPW III, 481). In defiance of Byron’s requests, Lara included an appendix of advertisements for Murray’s forthcoming publications offering the Phillips print, which Byron hated, for sale. Byron was irritated but indulgent considering the degree to which Murray had ignored his instructions. By this stage in their relationship Murray decided that it was better to ask for forgiveness after the fact as a form of retrospective permission. He would proceed with what he thought was the best commercial course of action without paying heed to Byron’s wishes and would then write a conciliatory letter expressing his gratitude for Byron’s ‘obliging sufferance’ (LJM, 103). As far as Murray was concerned, the men had a business partnership and as publisher it was his task to ensure the best sales possible. Murray’s determination to protect his monopoly over Byron’s publications was revealed the following year when, at the request of Douglas Kinnaird, Byron collaborated with the composer Isaac Nathan 133

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on Hebrew Melodies. The poems were written specifically for Nathan, a teacher of music and dancing, who wished to publish them accompanied by music. In his important study of Byron’s celebrity, Tom Mole emphasises that Hebrew Melodies represents Byron’s attempt to ‘resist the logic of celebrity’ and to break from the ‘Byronic sequence’ that was so ‘closely associated with the house of Murray’.76 The circumstances of the composition and (initial) publication of Hebrew Melodies excluded Murray and Mole argues persuasively for the publisher’s attempt to ‘repossess’ the work by including it in a collected volume of Byron’s verse.77 In this sense, Murray is charged with employing a ‘profitmotivated strategy of containment’ that worked against Byron’s urge to ‘write a different kind of poetry to that which sustained his fame’.78 Was Hebrew Melodies the work of a poet who was trying to escape the trap of ‘a promotional apparatus that increasingly seemed to impose someone else’s agenda on him’? Mole argues that ‘Byron needed new subjects and new styles so as not to atrophy’, while ‘Murray needed more of the same to sustain his income’.79 The implication is that Murray’s attempt to reclaim Hebrew Melodies from Nathan and absorb it into Byron’s collected works was motivated by his fear of the poet breaking from his established style and the potential impact on his profits. Byron’s motivation to write something different from the string of Eastern tales is easily attributed to the charges of predictability that were regularly levelled at him in reviews. We have already seen that several reviewers questioned Byron’s motivation in writing and publishing so frequently; many reviewers connected the sameness of the Eastern tales to a commercial drive, claiming the poems were ‘as like … as a one pound bank-note is to another pound bank-note, and with as little difference in value’ (RR, B: I, 428). Byron may have worried about the dangers of creative atrophy but it is a mistake to assume that Murray was not equally worried. While Byron’s tales were popular and profitable Murray was a clever enough publisher to know that the reading public would eventually want something different. His letters to Byron of this period illustrate his attempts to move the poet in a new direction. Murray repeatedly cited Gifford’s plea for the poet to slow down and ‘collect all his force … for one immortal work’, suggested ‘a deep Tragedy’ for his winter list, and proposed that Napoleon’s abdication would make an ideal subject for an epic poem (LJM, 42, 141, 89). Murray’s annoyance over the Hebrew Melodies had far less to do with his trying to contain Byron in terms of genre than with the fact that the poet was writing for someone else and, particularly, that he was writing for someone else 134

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in one of the most commercially profitable of all genres – the national melody (LJM, 126). Together with the Scottish music publisher George Thomson, Murray had repeatedly tried to get Byron to write lyrics for songs. Addressing Thomson directly, Byron claimed that he had ‘tried … without being able to satisfy’ himself in terms of quality, and in any case felt it would be a foolish endeavour to try to imitate the success of either Robert Burns or Thomas Moore (BLJ III, 114). The publication of national melodies was competitive and highly profitable; the marketplace was flooded with selections of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and even Indian melodies. In this respect, Isaac Nathan’s plan for Hebrew Melodies was as commercially motivated as any work published by John Murray. Nathan wrote to Byron on 30 June 1814 outlining his plan to publish ‘very beautiful Hebrew melodies of undoubted antiquity’. The assertion of antiquity has since been disputed by musicologists, who have shown that Jewish liturgical music of the early nineteenth century was ‘thoroughly corrupt’ and of all of Nathan’s melodies, only seven were identified as ‘genuine synagogue music’, four were ‘originally non-Jewish’ and only two had ‘any claim to antiquity’.80 Nathan wrote that he was ‘anxious that the poetry for them should be written by the first Poet of the present age’, which is why he initially approached Walter Scott. Nathan explained this by stating that it had been his most ‘sanguine wish from the first’ to ask Byron, but he had been intimidated by the knowledge that Byron ‘wrote only for amusement and … fame’.81 No reply from Byron has survived. Nathan succeeded in his endeavour through the intervention of Douglas Kinnaird, a banker who was involved in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, associated with Hobhouse and therefore known to Byron. Kinnaird wrote to the poet in September to ask him to employ his talents for Nathan’s benefit. It is clear from Kinnaird’s letter that Nathan viewed Byron’s involvement as an endorsement of his project, and therefore an assurance of commercial success: ‘[Nathan] very properly concludes that, if you would give him a few lines (if only for one air) the sale of his work would be Secur’d & his pocket enrich’d’.82 Kinnaird later wrote to Byron that ‘if the first Poet & the first musician as well as singer cannot ensure success for a joint production, I know not what can’.83 Murray immediately sought to pre-empt Nathan’s publication and to print the poems without the music, which would certainly have deprived Nathan of a considerable share of the market. At Murray’s request, Byron wrote to Nathan asking if he would allow Murray to include the poems in a forthcoming collected edition. Murray, with support from 135

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Hobhouse, argued that it would be unreasonable for the poems not to appear in a collected edition. Hobhouse disliked Byron’s close association with ‘a Jew for whom [Byron] has written words to Jewish melodies’ and describes ‘a scene’ where ‘poor B was taken to task for making Mr N impudent by shaking hands with him’.84 Murray wrote to remind Byron of Hobhouse’s opinion that ‘it is not precisely the same thing to have music made to ones poems and to write poetry for Music’ and advised the poet, ‘most conscientiously to abide by the determination of Mr Hobhouses Good Sense’ (LJM, 128). Kinnaird objected in the strongest possible terms to the temerity of ‘the merchant Murray’, and warned the poet that ‘this Scotchman considers you his property’ (LJM, 124). After some negotiation, a compromise was reached and Nathan published first. The first edition was an expensively produced folio costing a guinea. Murray printed a separate edition in demi-octavo a month later and included the poems in Byron’s collected works. Nathan’s edition sold approximately 10,000 copies and made a profit of around £5,000. Murray made £836 5s from a sale of 6,000 copies.85 Murray was deeply offended by what he saw as Byron’s involvement with ‘a sort of Charity’ (LJM, 126). Just as he was peeved by the Courier’s implication that he received Byron’s works for free, and as he would later be annoyed by the poet’s attempt to aid William Godwin, Murray’s reaction to the Hebrew Melodies project shows his desire to suppress any suggestion of philanthropy in his association with Byron. Murray’s belief that Byron had been taken in by a blatantly commercial and somewhat distasteful venture was shared by Thomas Moore. Nathan was later candid regarding the degree to which Byron wrote according to his wishes: [Byron] felt anxious to facilitate my views in preserving as much as possible the original airs, for which purpose he would frequently consult me regarding the style and metre of his stanzas. I accordingly desired to be favored with so many lines pathetic, some playful, others martial, &c.86

Not without a hint of anti-Semitism (and undoubtedly resentment that Byron was writing songs), Moore had deplored ‘that fellow Nathan, who is puffing off his Jewish wares in all sorts of quackish ways’.87 The entire situation was a clear illustration of Murray’s conviction that he alone was entitled to publish everything written by Byron. It also highlighted Murray’s ability to use Byron’s friends to influence him; Kinnaird wrote to the poet that ‘Murray set Hobhouse on me’.88 Tom Mole is right to gesture towards Murray’s ‘strategy of containment’ in this regard, but I would modify his argument slightly and call Murray’s strategy 136

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one of ownership. With the obvious exceptions in terms of works that would offend ‘the orthodox’ or deprive him of a sale (which he freely admitted to Byron), Murray did not wish to dictate what Byron wrote, just who he wrote for. There is no doubt that if Byron had approached Murray with a plan to compose a series of lyric poems to be set to music, the publisher would have been delighted. The fact that Byron was approached to write lyrics to what Murray petulantly called the ‘Stupid Hebrew Melodies’ and contributed to making a profit for someone else was something which did not sit easily with the publisher (LJM, 126). The hostile relations between Murray and Kinnaird, who clearly saw that the publisher felt he ‘owned’ Byron, would have serious implications later on. Preoccupied with his forthcoming marriage, Byron published comparatively little in 1815. Aside from the Hebrew Melodies, he produced two more Eastern tales, The Siege of Corinth and Parisina, which appeared in February 1816. The history of the composition of these tales is long and complex; described by McGann as ‘a patchwork’, Byron constructed the poems from pieces he had been working on as early as 1813 (CPW III, 481). Perhaps because of the difficult process of composition, Byron was quite negative about them (although he was also quite negative about poems he produced easily) and insisted that they should not be published separately. Instead, he felt they would be better suited to inclusion in the collected works which Murray was preparing, and instructed the publisher that it would be best placed ‘in the 4th vol. put it there & nowhere else – & if not put it in the fire’ (BLJ IV, 332). Predictably, Murray campaigned for publication in a separate volume and emphasised his regard for the poems by offering Byron £1,000 for the copyright to both works. Murray’s generosity was perhaps motivated by his knowledge that Byron was in financial difficulty. On hearing that his most famous poet was contemplating selling his library, Murray sent him a cheque for £1,500, promising to double the amount in a few weeks. Byron was deeply touched by his publisher’s generosity; however, he refused it, returning the cheques to Murray (BLJ IV, 333).89 Byron felt that the offer for the copyrights was ‘liberal in the extreme’ and reiterated that he would not consent to separate publication as it would ‘risk [his] fame’ (BLJ V, 13). When it became known within Murray’s circle that Byron had refused to accept the sum for himself, Samuel Rogers, having been prompted by Sir James Mackintosh, wrote to the poet suggesting that part of the sum could be used to save William Godwin from financial ruin (LJM, 156). Although he had never met Godwin, Byron 137

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was happy to comply, suggesting that £600 should be given to Godwin and that the remainder be divided between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Maturin (BLJ V, 16). Murray reacted badly to this proposal and wrote to Byron that it was ‘a species of cruelty’ to give away money he had offered ‘with no reference to the marketable value of the poems, but out of personal friendship and gratitude alone’ to those whom he considered ‘wanton and ungenerous’ (LJM, 155). There is little doubt that the thought that his money would go to radical writers like Godwin was part of the reason why Murray was so distressed. He implored Byron to consider that he was by no means a rich man, and as he worked ‘hard for independence’ it was ‘heartbreaking to throw away [his] earnings on others’ (LJM, 156). Peter Manning sees this letter as evidence of the fact that for Murray, ‘the relations of author and publisher are governed by the rules of commerce and the pressure of profit … he speaks of the earnings as his, rather than those of the author from whose poems they grew’.90 Byron was angered by this letter, rebuked Murray for his ‘impudence’ in offering so much for the poems in the first place, and reminded him that he would spend his money as he saw fit, stating that it was no business of his publisher’s whether he paid it ‘to a w or a hospital – or assisted a man of talent in distress’ (BLJ V, 17). He also cancelled the publication of Siege and Parisina, demanding the immediate return of the manuscripts. Despite initial acrimony, after some weeks the matter was resolved and both poems were published in a single volume, as Murray had wished, on 13 February 1816. The Siege of Corinth and Parisina were the fifth and sixth major poems in three years and as Byron had anticipated, he was accused of playing ‘with the public till his toying is become tiresome’ (RR, B: II, 643). The Critical Review stated that as Byron had ‘more than once declared in his prefaces and advertisements, that he had relinquished all poetical pursuits’, his inconsistency indicated at worst ‘a studied and confirmed disrespect to the opinion of an admiring public’ and at best ‘a deplorable want of firmness and clearness of judgement’ (RR, B: II, 644). The review of Siege and Parisina in The Champion is representative of the general tenor of the criticism that greeted the final Eastern tales: … frequent quarrelling with one’s bread and butter – quickly and constantly succeeded by an eager-taking to it again, may be an amusing, but it is by no means a dignified exhibition … He will and he won’t: he regrets having written at all and anon he writes again: he will not write for some years, and he cannot hold for a few weeks. (RR, B: II, 523)

As Byron claimed to view poetry as ‘an art or an attribute, and not a 138

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profession’, he would have been appalled to see it described as his ‘bread and butter’, but he could not have argued against the main objection in the review (BLJ VI, 47). Byron’s inconsistency was the main charge against him; he was also accused of ‘forcing’ upon the public ‘as the food of the mind, what, if report be true, turns his own stomach’ (RR, B: II, 524). Despite Murray’s assurances that he would ‘last far beyond any poet of the present day’, Byron was preoccupied by the difference between lasting fame and temporary celebrity. Evidence of this distinction is found in his London journal, where Byron records his reaction to hearing that his poetry was popular in the United States: These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears – to be redde on the banks of the Ohio! ... To be popular in a rising and far country has a kind of posthumous feel, very different from the ephemeral éclat and fete-ing, buzzing and party-ing compliments of the well-dressed multitude. (BLJ III, 229–230)

‘Fame’ is here defined in relation to what Byron calls a ‘posthumous feel’ and is evidently not related to the acclaim of fashionable London society. When that society turned its back on him in the wake of the very public separation scandal, Byron saw that he was right to classify its ‘compliments’ as fleeting and transitory. Left with no choice but to leave England, Byron found himself left with what he would later call ‘the usual consolation of authors’, the hope that his true fame would be recognised by posterity (BLJ V, 172). Notes 1 Letter from Byron to Thomas Moore, 8 March 1816, BLJ V, 45. 2 McGann, The Beauty of Inflections, p. 257. 3 Dallas, Recollections, p. 290. 4 For more on the history of No. 50 Albemarle Street, see Humphrey Carpenter, The Seven Lives of John Murray: The Story of a Publishing Dynasty, 1768–2002 (London: John Murray, 2008) pp. 77–85. 5 By this stage the Murray’s had lost two boys, Charles and Christina’s twin brother. See note 59 to Chapter 1. 6 John Murray II to Archy Murray, 6 August 1813. JMA, 43025. 7 Ibid. 8 James Grant, Portraits of Public Characters, 2 vols (London: Saunders and Otley, 1841) vol. 2, pp. 8–9. 9 John Keats, Selected Letters, ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 301. 10 Ibid., p.  413. 11 William Wordsworth to Samuel Rogers, 15 August 1825. The Letters of William and

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Dorothy Wordsworth: The Later Years, Part I, 1821–1828, ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 381. 12 Thomas Moore, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, ed. A.D Godfrey (London: Oxford University Press, 1910) p. 683. 13 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, 23 March 1814. 14 Graham, ‘Byron and the Business of Publishing’, p. 31. 15 MacCarthy, Byron, p. 213. 16 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 5 October 1814. JMA, MS. 43023. See also SS I, 253–255. 17 A frequently cited instance of Murray’s direct encouragement is his alleged request for Byron to write an extra stanza for Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte in ‘order to escape the necessity of paying a Stamp Duty & of having every Copy stamped it being only One Sheet’ (LJM, 93). In fact, while Murray did want to avoid the tax, his proposal was that he should print a short poem Byron had sent him at the end of the Ode. Byron offered the new stanza himself. 18 JMA, MS. 43023. Murray is referring to Byron’s letter of 7 September 1814 (BLJ IV, 167). 19 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 3 September 1814. JMA, MS. 43023. 20 Marchand, Byron, vol. 1, p. 423. 21 Lady Caroline Lamb, The Whole Disgraceful Truth: Selected Letters of Lady Caroline Lamb, ed. Paul Douglass (Great Britain: Palgrave, 2006) p. 111. 22 Ibid., pp.  117–120. 23 Paul Douglass, Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography (London: Palgrave, 2004) p. 151. 24 Ibid., p.  151. 25 Ibid., p. 267. 26 John Murray II to Annie Murray, 24 September 1814. JMA, 43023. 27 Marchand, Byron, vol. I, p. 423. 28 Lamb, Selected Letters of Lady Caroline Lamb, pp. 127–128. 29 Ibid., p.  120. 30 Ibid., p.  121. 31 Marchand, Byron, vol. 1, p. 423. 32 Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 13. 33 Sir William Jones, Selected Poetical and Prose Works, ed. Michael Franklin (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995) p. 336. 34 Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East, p. 13. 35 In the preface to The Corsair Byron stated that Spenserian stanzas were ‘too slow and dignified for narrative’ (CPW III, 149). 36 Robert F. Gleckner, Byron and the Ruins of Paradise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967) p. 96. 37 William H. Marshall, ‘The Accretive Structure of Byron’s “The Giaour”’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 76, no. 6 (Jun., 1961) p. 502. 38 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 144. 39 Marchand, Byron, vol. I, p. 257. Although this is the accepted version of events, there appear to be two sides to the story. Having spoken to Mary Shelley, Thomas Moore recorded a version in which Byron discovered that the girl had already been executed. See MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend, p. 132. 40 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 143.

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‘i h av e w r i t t e n to o m uch’ 41 Moore, Letters, vol. I, p. 275. 42 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 121. 43 Ibid., p.  121. 4 4 William Hazlitt, ‘The Periodical Press’ in Keen, Revolutions in Romantic Literature, p. 11. 45 Wordsworth, The Major Works, p. 651. 46 Ibid., pp. 660, 645. 47 That ‘unpronounceable name’ (BLJ III, 158), as Byron described it, was a topic for much debate amongst readers and reviewers. Although Byron rhymes ‘Giaour’ with ‘hour’, ‘power’ and ‘bower’, he also rhymes it with ‘lower’ to add to the confusion. In Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818) Captain Benwick discusses how it might be pronounced with Anne Elliot. In 1817 Byron wrote to Murray that ‘the “Giaour” has never been pronounced to this day’ (BLJ V, 191). 48 St Clair, The Reading Nation, p. 323. 49 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 106. 50 Manning, Reading Romantics, p. 227. 51 Thomas Medwin, Conversations with Lord Byron, ed. Ernest Lovell Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966) p. 214. 52 Stuart Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 143. 53 Ibid., p. 143. 54 The drama was Illusion or the Traces of Nourjahad, performed at Drury Lane Theatre on 23 November 1813. 55 See Dallas to John Murray, 8 June 1813. JMA, MS. 40307. 56 Dallas, Recollections, pp. 271–272. 57 Ibid., p.  274. 58 Dallas to Byron, 29 December 1813. JMA, MS. 43422. 59 Peter Manning, Reading Romantics: Texts and Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 200. 60 For a selection of the criticism levelled at Byron in 1814, see LJM, 476–505. 61 Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (London: Phoenix, 1997) p. 391. 62 See Peter Manning, ‘Tales and Politics: The Corsair, Lara, and The White Doe of Rylstone’, Reading Romantics, pp. 195–215. 63 Ibid., p.  203. 64 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 91. 65 Ibid., p.  91. 66 St Clair, The Reading Nation, p. 181. 67 George L. Phillips, ‘Elliot’s The Giaour’, The Review of English Studies, vol. 15, no. 60. (Oct., 1939) p. 422. 68 Jane Stabler, ‘Introduction’, Palgrave Advances in Byron Studies, ed. Jane Stabler (London: Palgrave, 2007) p. 3; Martin, ‘Heroism and History’, p. 83; Peter Manning, ‘Don Juan and the Revisionary Self’, Romantic Revisions, eds. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 216. William Hazlitt described Byron’s ‘Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold’ as ‘all the same person … apparently all himself’ (Hazlitt, Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, Vol. I, p. 306). 69 Moore, Letters, vol. I, p. 289. 70 Samuel Johnson, The Major Works, p. 175.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay 71 Courier, Thursday 17 February 1814. See LJM, 493–495. 72 Peter Cochran, ‘Did Byron take money for his work?’, The Byron Journal, 31 (2003) p. 76. 73 Marchand, Byron, vol. I, p. 448. 74 This period was one of the most turbulent in Byron’s personal life as he tried to deal with Lady Caroline Lamb’s excessive attachment and rumours of his affair with Augusta Leigh. See Byron, vol. I, pp. 380–476. 75 The advertisement was rewritten by Murray, who changed Hobhouse’s wording and put him ‘into a fever’. Hobhouse objected to Murray’s grammar and accused the publisher of ‘downright vulgarism’. Murray defended himself against what he called a ‘formidable attack’ in a letter to Byron on 6 August 1814. See LJM, 104–106. 76 Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity, p. 100. 77 Ibid., p.  108. 78 Ibid., pp. 114, 100. 79 Ibid., p.  100. 80 Joseph Slater, ‘Byron’s Hebrew Melodies’, Studies in Philology, vol. 49, no. 1 (Jan., 1952) p. 78. 81 Isaac Nathan to Byron, 30 June 1814. Quoted in Thomas L. Ashton, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) pp. 9–10. 82 Letter from Douglas Kinnaird to Byron, 15 September 1814. JMA, MS. 43455. See also Peter Cochran’s transcriptions of Kinnaird and Byron’s correspondence, www. petercochran.wordpress.com/byron-and-kinnaird-1814-1821/ 83 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 10 January 1815. JMA, MS. 43455. 84 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, Saturday 26 November 1814. 85 See Ashton, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, pp. 48–49. 86 Quoted in Ashton, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, p. 162. 87 Thomas Crofton Croker, ed., Notes from the Letters of Thomas Moore to his Music Publisher, James Power (New York: J.S. Redfield, 1853) p. 46. 88 Kinnaird to Byron, 12 January 1815, JMA, MS. 43455. 89 Byron’s library was eventually sold on 5 and 6 April 1816 at Mr R.H. Evans, 26 Pall Mall. The sale raised £723 12s 6d. Of 383 lots, John Murray bought seventy-five. See CMP, 231–245. 90 Manning, ‘Childe Harold in the Marketplace’, p. 181.

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John Murray and ‘the Demon of Silence’: Byron in Exile1 byron in exile In November 1815 Murray wrote to Walter Scott about Byron. The publisher informed Scott that ‘Lord Byron is perfectly well, and is in better dancing spirits than I ever knew him, expecting every day a son and heir’ (SS I, 286). There was no reason to doubt Murray’s assessment. Byron had been in good humour during his frequent visits to Albemarle Street, he had been married for almost a year, his wife was about to give birth to their first child and he was the most famous poet in the country. Scott had met Byron a few weeks previously and in later years remembered that he had never seen him ‘so full of fun, frolic, wit and whim; he was as playful as a kitten’.2 In fact, despite appearances, Byron was almost ‘at the end of his rope’.3 His marriage to Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, which had taken place the previous January, was deeply unhappy. Byron felt pressured into the marriage in the first place, partly for financial but primarily for personal reasons; he needed to deflect rumours about his relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Marriage to Annabella was viewed by Byron and Augusta as ‘the only chance of redemption for two persons’, but as early as the honeymoon, the relationship was in trouble (BLJ IV, 191). When Byron woke during the night to see the fire shining through red cloth that hung over the bed and Annabella beside him, he thought that he was ‘fairly in hell’.4 Hobhouse, who allegedly tried to persuade the vicar to cancel the ceremony, felt that he had ‘buried a friend’.5 The accounts of what happened during the twelve months between Byron marrying Annabella and her leaving him are contradictory, resentful and coloured by subsequent bitterness. There is no doubt that Byron behaved very badly towards his wife. He was around £30,000 in debt, consumed by guilt, and he was fundamentally incompatible with Annabella. He drank heavily and spent much of his time at Albemarle Street and Drury Lane Theatre, where he had an affair with the actress 143

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Susan Boyce. Byron’s behaviour became so erratic that Annabella began to doubt his sanity. A few weeks after the birth of their daughter, she took the baby to her parents’ home in Kirkby Mallory. Byron would never see either of them again. Byron’s initial reaction to the realisation that his wife had left him was one of disbelief, encapsulated in a letter to Annabella’s father, Sir Ralph Noel, where he claimed to be ‘at a loss’ over his wife’s actions (BLJ V, 20).The legal negotiations and newspaper gossip that followed shattered him emotionally. He later reflected to Thomas Moore that he had never been ‘at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooting of present pleasure or rational hope for the future’ (BLJ V, 35). Byron’s letters to Annabella reminded her of the implications of their separation, advising her to ‘recollect – that all is at stake – the present – the future – & even the colouring of the past’ (BLJ V, 22). Public opinion soon turned against Byron and he found himself ostracised from polite society and the subject of intense gossip. The scenario is best described by the poet himself: I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour, – and private rancour; my name which had been a knightly or a noble one since My fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. – I felt that, If what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true – I was unfit for England, – if false – England was unfit for me … the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander – and doubled enmity. – I was advised not to go to theatres lest I should be hissed, – nor to my duty in parliament lest I should be insulted … my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under apprehensions of violence … (CMP, 95)

The reaction left Byron with no choice but to leave England. Rumours went beyond the breakdown of his marriage towards allegations of incest and sodomy. Social ostracism was bad enough; homosexuality was a capital offence. Moore was right to emphasise that Byron’s exile had ‘not even the dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice of society seemed to leave him no other resource’.6 Following his year of ‘distress – distemper – and misfortune’, Byron left England on 25 April 1816 (BLJ V, 27). Writing to Annabella a few weeks before his departure he described leaving Augusta, ‘almost the last being you had left me to part with – & the only unshattered tie of my existence’ (BLJ V, 66). Byron wrote several verses to Augusta before he left; Murray indiscreetly showed them to Caroline Lamb, causing further complications for the poet. There are no records of Murray’s thoughts 144

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on the scandal surrounding his most famous author except for one intriguing comment by Caroline Lamb, who recalled the publisher, in a moment of anger, expressing his opinion that Byron was ‘done for’. Her response to Murray was that his belief was premature; she advised him not to ‘forget what a Rogue [Byron] is – … the sun may shine upon a bit of broken Glass till it appears like a Diamond but if you take it up you will only cut your fingers’.7 While Lamb wrote to Byron imploring him not publish ‘Stanzas to Augusta’, Murray’s letters to the poet were as pleasant as ever, and he was clearly concerned for Byron’s wellbeing throughout the ordeal of the separation. Byron assured his publisher that he ‘need not be in any apprehension or grief’ about him, adding that Murray should not mistake his ‘not bullying for dejection’ (BLJ V, 29). Murray’s last letter to Byron in England, sent the day before the poet left London for Dover, follows his usual pattern of relating praise as he enclosed an admiring letter from Maria Graham to show Byron ‘that you are thought of in the remotest corners’. Appropriating the title of Byron’s parting shot at Annabella, Murray signed off ‘Fare Thee well’ (LJM, 163). As we have seen in previous chapters, Byron was concerned that he was writing too much too quickly and was ambivalent in his regard for his poetry. In January 1816 he wrote to Murray ‘I do not like to risk my fame (whether merited or not) … upon compositions which I do not feel to be at all equal to my own notions of what they should be’ (BLJ V, 13); a few weeks later he strenuously defended his Tales against accusations of ‘haste & negligence’ by claiming that his readers failed to appreciate the formal variety of his ‘rather uncommon & designedly irregular versification’. He felt ‘sorry for it’ as he ‘endeavoured to make them different from each other’, and he was convinced that if he had ever done ‘anything original it was in C[hil]d[e] H[arol]d’ (BLJ V, 29; IV, 107). As he left England, Byron turned to Childe Harold once again. The dramatic circumstances surrounding his exile were a catalyst for the meditation on reputation and fame that occurs throughout the third canto of Childe Harold because, as Andrew Bennett has persuasively argued, Byron viewed his departure as ‘an act of self-annihilation’.8 Bennett’s insightful analysis of the short poem ‘Churchill’s Grave: A Fact Literally Rendered’ illustrates the manner in which Byron, quite literally, performed a ‘dramatic rehearsal for death’ the day before he sailed for Ostend.9 This rehearsal involved Byron lying on the grave of the poet Charles Churchill. The poem that commemorates this incident is a frank expression of Byron’s scepticism regarding the merits of contemporary fame. As Jane Stabler describes it, the poem explores the ‘melancholy 145

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erasure of human achievement’.10 Byron styles Churchill as ‘a famous writer in his day’, one ‘who blazed / The comet of a season’ (ll. 1–2) and asks ‘is this all? … do we rip / The veil of Immortality?’ (ll. 15–16). The poem concludes disdainfully with lines that anticipate the final stanzas of the first canto of Don Juan as Byron summarises his sense of Churchill’s legacy: ‘In which there was Obscurity and Fame, / The Glory and the Nothing of a Name’ (ll. 43–44). These lines illustrate the uncomfortable truth that recognition can easily give way to anonymity and that a ‘Name’ can be at once glorious and groundless. Reminiscent of the opening cantos of Childe Harold, Byron’s particular grievance is the inability of monuments to provide a suitable sense of past fame or heroism. In this respect, the poem is readily comparable to Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. In broad details the similarities are obvious: the graveyard setting and the regret for the modest resting places of the dead. As Gray laments the ‘narrow cell[s]’ (l. 15) in the graveyard he asks, ‘Can storied urn or animated bust / Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?’ (ll. 41–42). Byron begins in parallel fashion, describing the ‘humblest of all sepulchres’ on ‘neglected turf’ (ll. 3–5). A meditation on mortality by an isolated speaker desperate to be remembered, the original conclusion to Gray’s Elegy saw the tormented poet repress his ‘fierce tumultuous passion’. Gray rejected these stanzas in favour of an ending that finds use for the ‘frail memorial still erected nigh, / With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d’ (ll. 78–79). The use is that even the most unassuming memorial will at least prompt someone to give the dead the tribute of a ‘passing sigh’ (l. 80). Elegy demonstrates that remembrance after death is enabled only by living people, who reminisce about the dead: On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires. (ll. 89–92)

In April 1816 Byron’s reputation was in tatters, reviewers asserted that he had written too much already and he was forced to leave everything and everyone he knew. The ‘fond breast’ on which the parting Byron relied was his daughter Ada. The third canto of Childe Harold is frequently read as a ‘canto of crisis’: personal, political and poetical.11 Beginning and ending with an address to Ada, Byron views the political turmoil in Europe through the lens of his chaotic personal life, a technique Jerome Christensen describes as ‘the grand Byronic identification of 146

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psyche and world historical moment’ and which contemporary reviewers described as the ‘species of egotism … which pervades his Lordship’s productions’ (RR, B: II, 743). Weakening the distinction between Harold and the poet, the poem is a mirror ‘in which the public may view the tumultuous movements of the author’s breast’ (RR, B: II, 689). The mirrors throughout the poem are ‘broken’ and ‘shatter’d’ (III.33), although the poet is insistent that while ‘the heart will break’ it will ‘brokenly live on’ (III.33). Byron’s attempt to live on, though broken, is realised through the appeal to Ada. By his own admission, Byron was dosed ‘with Wordsworth physic even to nausea’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley and parts of the canto are so obviously indebted to Wordsworth that contemporary reviewers accused Byron of plagiarism.12 Of the final stanzas, McGann states that ‘the whole thing is the conclusion to “Tintern Abbey” all over again’.13 Wordsworth’s influence, mediated by Shelley, is clear throughout the poem. Large sections explore the value of solitary contemplation in natural surroundings and the potential healing powers of nature: ‘I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me’ (III.72). Byron’s experimentation with Wordsworthian aesthetics is part of his attempt to come to terms with his situation, and his desire to investigate the circumstances that led to it; as McGann asserts, the aftermath to the separation controversy ‘exposed to critical analysis a whole train of Byron’s most cherished ideas and illusions’.14 One of these ideas concerns authorship; the early stanzas of Canto III display Byron’s anxiety that he may never be able to write as he had once done: ‘Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string, / And both may jar: it may be, that in vain / I would essay as I have sung to sing’ (III.4). Searching for some meaning in what he writes, he concludes that the worth of poetry is in the moment of creation, which can bestow renewed live on the poet: ’Tis to create, and in creating live A being more intense, that we endow With form our fancy, gaining as we give The life we image, even as I do now. (III.6)

Tom Mole writes of this introspective, Romantic moment that ‘the reader has no place here’.15 Mole argues that the canto is Byron’s attempt to ‘find a way to go on without the audience who had celebrated him’.16 The audience Byron engages with in this canto is a future audience represented by his daughter. Before the final address to his daughter, Byron interrogates the fleeting nature of fame and the impulse that compels men to seek renown. 147

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Many critics have pointed to the recurrent images of climbing, heights and aspiration in the poem, representing the quest for fame: ‘Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold / The star which rises o’er her steep, nor climb?’ (III.11).17 The preface to the earlier cantos conceded that the jaded Harold was stirred by ambition; having been forcefully made aware of the vanity of such a pursuit, the third canto sees him continue his journey ‘with a nobler aim’ (III.11). The portraits of Napoleon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau which follow serve as examples of what Samuel Johnson called the vanity of human wishes and emphatically suggest the insubstantial nature of fame.18 The ‘Johnsonian tones’ identified by Vincent Newey are most apparent in the portrayal of Napoleon.19 The characterisation of Napoleon, an obvious double for Byron, is resonant with Byronic overtones; a magnetic figure capable of inspiring followers but incapable of managing himself: ‘An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild, / But govern not thy pettiest passion’ (III.38). Napoleon is presented as neither ‘the greatest, nor the worst of men’, a man who is ‘Extreme in all things’ and whose status as ‘Conqueror and captive of the earth’ is emblematic of his duality (III.36–37). From his position as ‘Thunderer of the scene’ he has now fallen to a state where he is ‘nothing, save the jest of Fame’ (III.37). In Byron’s view fame jests with Napoleon for believing that the image he created in order to ‘shake … the world’ was unshakeable in itself (III.36). The rise to power had been effected because the public ‘deem’d [him] for a time whate’er [he] didst assert’; the downfall came because he had been ‘woo’d’ by fame and made the fatal error of forgetting that ‘tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star’ (III.38). Byron describes how fate deserted Napoleon principally because he failed to realise ‘the groundlessness of his triumph’.20 His success was frail since it was built on the foundation of ‘Men and their thoughts’; Napoleon became famous because of the image he created in the minds of his followers: ‘men’s thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, / Their admiration thy best weapon shone’ (III.40, 41). As such, the fame itself was a simulacrum, constructed on the basis of the abstract ideas of others. Jerome Christensen writes well about this aspect of the poem. He calls the path which led to Napoleon’s gaining power a ‘theoretical ladder’ and the public image Napoleon created for himself a ‘speculation’.21 Christensen’s notion of ‘a literary system named Byron’, which he describes as a ‘systematically elaborated, commercially triumphant version of himself’, is useful in understanding Childe Harold III.22 In addressing Napoleon, Byron addresses himself; it is a moment of 148

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penetrating insight in which Byron confronts the nature of his literary fame. Earlier in the poem he had anticipated his discussion of the empty nature of fame by admitting that his popularity had left him an avatar, with Harold having more life than he has: ‘What am I? Nothing but not so art thou, / Soul of my thought!’ (III.6). Perhaps thinking of the reviewers who had chastised him for inconsistency and disdain, Byron writes that Napoleon’s ultimate fall came because of the ‘habitual scorn, / which could contemn / Men and their thoughts’. He does not criticise him for feeling the scorn, but for showing it: ‘’twas wise to feel, not so / To wear it ever on thy lip and brow’ (III.40). These stanzas and those which follow closely resemble ‘Epistle to Augusta’. The poem is notable for Byron’s claim that the ‘fault’ (l. 21) of his situation is entirely his own and his description of himself as having being ‘cunning in [his] overthrow, / The careful pilot of [his] proper woe’ (ll. 23–24). He states that he does not wish to ‘screen’ his ‘errors with defensive paradox’ but in a blatant example of what McGann calls ‘the conscious deployment of duplicitous and hypocritical postures’, asserts that his fame had come to him ‘unsought’.23 The important element in this poem is Byron’s propagation of the notion that he had become famous without actively seeking it. He writes that he had nothing to do with ‘Fame’ and ‘false Ambition’ and combines this with a typically Byronic notion of fate urging him to his destruction (ll. 97–98). In the section on Napoleon in Childe Harold III this fate becomes what Johnson called the ‘restless fire’ or ‘fatal Heat’.24 Byron also calls it a ‘fire’, a ‘motion of the soul which will not dwell / In its own narrow being, but aspire / Beyond the fitting medium of desire’ (III.42). Byron and Napoleon are both driven by the ‘breath of agitation’, a ‘contagion’ that compels them to seek fame and recognition. The word ‘contagion’ specifically implies an affliction, something that is not under the control of those who draw the ‘breath’ which makes them ‘wretched’ (III.77). The fatal element comes when men’s thoughts turn against them and ‘as a flame unfed’ they are left ‘fools to those they fool’ (III.43, 44). By the end of the poem, following a largely unsuccessful attempt at restoring himself through nature, Byron arrives at a position where he rejects fame as ‘the thirst of youth’. Having realised the insubstantial nature of popularity, he writes that he is now wise enough not to ‘regard men’s frown or smile, / As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot’ (III.112). In an explicit attempt to deny any suggestion he might have sought fame out of vanity, he writes his parting words to the English public: 149

by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d To its idolatries a patient knee, – Nor coin’d my cheek to smiles, – nor cried aloud In worship of an echo. (III.113)

To understand Byron’s representation of popularity in this stanza we must remind ourselves of Coleridge’s description of reputation, as something built by people who ‘re-suppose the suppositions of others’.25 It is easy to compare this definition to an echo; the type of popularity Byron enjoyed resembled Napoleon’s in as much as it was based on ‘men’s thoughts’, continual resupposition of favourable public opinion; Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine described the nature of Byron’s fame in precisely this fashion: ‘Lord Byron has been elected by acclamation to the throne of poetical supremacy’ (RR, B: I, 118). The stanza concludes with the striking image of Byron standing alone in a crowd, in the midst of a reverberation of thoughts he knows are generated by others: ‘I stood / Among them, but not of them; in a shroud / Of thoughts which were not their thoughts’ (III.113). In the future, weary of Murray’s incessant reporting of other people’s opinions and regretting the poetry of his early career, Byron would return to this image and reiterate his rejection of popular opinion: as long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few years, when I have endeavoured at better things and written what I suspect to have the principle of duration in it … all men … have risen up against me … (BLJ IX, 173)

In concluding Childe Harold III with an address to Ada, Byron is not just searching for consolation or imagining a single, ‘ideal’ reader; his daughter is representative of a future English reading public, appreciative of the ‘better things’; those ‘To whom the shadows of far years extend’ (III.115). In a letter to Hobhouse, written a month after he left, Byron asked to be remembered to ‘the superb Murray’, who he imagined was ‘enjoying inglorious ease at his green table – & wishing for somebody to keep him in hot water’ (BLJ V, 77). In fact, with his business continuing to expand, Murray was busier than ever. Murray’s firm went from publishing 20 titles in 1810, to 99 in 1816.26 The Quarterly had increased in influence and circulation, and as Murray’s reputation as a successful publisher grew he was overwhelmed with unsolicited manuscripts: ‘I am continually 150

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harrassed [sic] by Shoals of MSS Poems – Two three four a day – I require a Porter to carry – an Author to read – and a secretary to write about – them’ (LJM, 188). Murray was also seen as a point of contact for Byron and Augusta Leigh joined Caroline Lamb in viewing the publisher as a confidant and source of information. Augusta wrote regularly to Murray, often to reveal her worry about the scandal Byron left behind him. In April 1816 she told him ‘I am very sorry for all this newspaper war – & wish you would tell me a little about it’. A few months later, after reading an advertisement claiming The Scourge was about to publish a ‘Circumstantial Account of the Cause of the Separation of Lord and Lady Byron’, Augusta wrote a frantic letter to Murray: ‘What can it mean & will there never be an end to this truly wretched business!’.27 By corresponding with Augusta, meeting her regularly and writing to Byron about the welfare of his daughter, Murray strengthened his personal connection with the poet. This personal relationship would prove problematic for Murray when it came to managing his correspondence with Byron. The tensions that led to the eventual break between Byron and Murray were evident in 1816, when Byron’s sense of alienation and isolation from England was exacerbated by Murray’s infrequent correspondence. An examination of the surviving letters between poet and publisher between 1816 and 1822 reveals that Byron was heavily dependent on Murray for news of his publications and for general literary and social gossip from England. Murray was Byron’s principal correspondent for several years. Such was the volume of letters from Byron arriving at Albemarle Street that one reviewer asked: ‘Is an English nobleman to have no correspondent but his bookseller?’28 As early as December 1816 Byron complained to his publisher that from ‘England I hear nothing – & know nothing of any thing or any body’; a protest that would become a regular feature of his letters to Murray (BLJ V, 137). In addition to keeping Byron informed about literary matters, Murray was also responsible for sending books, reviews, newspapers, tooth powder, tooth brushes, soda powder and ‘any such anti-odontalgic or chemical articles’ that the poet might require (BLJ VIII, 219). Byron also sent personal letters to Murray for distribution. In this way, as Nicholson suggests, Murray was ‘the postman between Byron and many of his correspondents in England’ (LJM, 190). This irritated some of Byron’s friends, particularly Hobhouse, who did not ‘consider it right to be obliged to “dear Murray” for either trouble or expense in transmitting … letters’.29 Murray’s indolence as a correspondent made Byron’s reliance on 151

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him difficult. If (or rather when) Murray delayed in writing after the publication of a new poem, Byron would assume that the work had failed. This is true of Manfred – ‘You say nothing of Manfred, from which its failure may be inferred’ – and the fourth Canto of Childe Harold – ‘Your silence makes me doubt the success of C[ant]o 4th’ (BLJ V, 254; VI, 53). Of course Murray’s silence did not necessarily mean that a poem had failed, merely that, as was frequently the case, he forgot to mention it in his letters. Murray had become so flattered by his close relationship with Byron that he felt he was (in the publisher’s own words) ‘one of the few who really knew’ him, and he often wrote personal, gossipy letters and neglected to report properly on publishing matters (LJM, 214). Hobhouse’s reaction to Byron’s ignorance of the fate of the final canto of Childe Harold is evidence of Murray’s negligence in this regard: ‘What do you mean by saying that you have heard nothing of the IVth Canto – What does Murray write about?’30 What Byron referred to as the publisher’s ‘unbusinesslike’ behaviour in this regard would eventually become a major issue in their association (BLJ VII, 75). When Byron was abroad the process from composition to publication of his works necessarily differed from what it had been in England. Byron’s usual practice was to send his manuscript to Murray and then trust the publisher and his advisors to proof read, punctuate and generally oversee the production of his works. This process worked when Byron was in close proximity to Murray because it was feasible to send short notes and alterations by post. It also facilitated an accretive process of composition – most notably with The Giaour. While Byron wrote quickly and Murray published quickly, the rapidity of the process was not without its difficulties. Byron was often furious with what he perceived to be carelessness in printing, wishing a variety of colourful misfortunes on Murray’s ‘Devils of printers’, most memorably that they should be ‘saddled with a vampire’ (BLJ III, 192). Claiming that misprints choked him, made him ill, and as ‘the Devil never created or perverted such a fiend as the fool of a printer’, Byron decided the only answer to the ‘conspiracy of [Murray] and the printer not to attend to one word I say’ was to ask to see the proofs himself (BLJ IV, 33, 83). Byron’s wish to see the proofs, to correct mistakes, or to add to the text was easily accommodated when he was in England. When the poet was abroad, an unreliable postal service made it impossible to continue in this manner. Given the uncertain nature of the postal service, the safest way of communicating by letter was to personally entrust correspondence to someone who was travelling to England. This is the method Byron 152

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chose for the third Canto of Childe Harold. He wrote his copy in a red morocco-bound notebook and gave it to his friend Scrope Davies to take back to England. As it happened, another copy reached Murray’s hands before Davies arrived in London.31 As Byron was concerned about the fate of the manuscript and ‘very anxious that it should be published with as few errata as possible’, he arranged for two copies to be made by members of his new literary circle; one by Claire Clairmont and one by Mary Shelley (BLJ V, 90). Byron first met Percy Bysshe Shelley on 27 May 1816 and despite mutual shyness at their initial meeting they associated closely for several months.32 Although very different men (and very different poets), the two would have long and animated conversations, wonderfully commemorated by Shelley in his poem Julian and Maddalo. The meeting with Shelley and the ‘friendship-cum-rivalry’ that ensued was one of the most important moments of Byron’s literary career.33 During the time they spent together they were, as Nora Crook describes them, ‘one of the great poetic pairings’.34 Shelley believed that Byron was a man of immense talent, but that he needed to be made aware of his responsibility as a poet, to be ‘less cynical, purged of bad habits and indiscipline’ and to be urged to greater things.35 Shelley as Julian describes his impression of Byron as Maddalo: ‘The sense that he was greater than his kind / Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind / By gazing on its own exceeding light’ (ll. 50–53).36 Shelley felt compelled to show Byron ‘A better station’, to ‘reclaim him from his dark estate’ (ll. 87, 576). Shelley wrote to Byron to persuade him of his great potential as a poet: You are destined, believe me, to assume a rank in the estimation of mankind where such puerile hostilities cannot reach … You are now in Italy – you have, perhaps, forgotten all that my unwelcome anxiety reminds you of. You contemplate objects that elevate, inspire, tranquillise. You communicate the feelings, which arise out of that contemplation, to mankind; perhaps to the men of distant ages … your powers are astonishingly great, and … they ought to be exerted to their full extent … you are chosen out from all other men to some greater enterprise of thought; and … all your studies should, from that moment, tend towards that enterprise alone.37

In some respects Shelley’s letter to Byron is similar to several of Murray’s letters in which the publisher tries to convince the poet of his extraordinary talent. The difference is that Shelley’s instruction is the opposite of Murray and his advisors. Gifford wrote to Byron to implore him ‘not to squander’ his ‘extraordinary powers’, advising him that he may choose his ‘station in the temple of fame’. Murray, proprietor of 153

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what William Hazlitt called the temple of fame at Albemarle Street, supported Gifford’s wish to see Byron ‘concentrate his powers on one point’, and perhaps write an epic poem (LJM, 34).38 Murray’s commercially motivated guidance consistently directed Byron to look beyond contemporary concerns and towards his future fame. Murray’s advisors supported this strategy; irritated by the political content of the notes to Childe Harold III, J.W. Croker asked: ‘what has a poet who writes for immortality to do with the little temporary passions of political parties? Such notes are like Pope’s “flies in amber”’ (LJM, 178). Shelley advised Byron very differently: .

It is not that I should counsel you to aspire to fame. The motive to your labours ought to be more pure, and simple. You ought to desire no more than to express your own thoughts; to address yourself to the sympathy of those who might think with you. Fame will follow those whom it is unworthy to lead. I would not that you should immediately apply yourself to the composition of an Epic Poem; or to whatever other work you should collect all your being to consummate.39

Unlike Murray, Shelley discounts the idea that Byron should immediately try to write an epic poem. He also discourages Byron from paying attention to any concern (including the attainment of fame or commercial success) beyond the poetic expression of his thoughts. In his Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, Edward Trelawny recalled a conversation between the poets that is indicative of the extent to which Byron was seen to be in thrall to commercial interests. Trelawny writes that Byron had claimed ‘John Murray, my patron and paymaster … urges me to resume my old Corsair style, to please the ladies’, to which Shelley ‘indignantly answered, “That is very good logic for a bookseller, but not for an author”’. Trelawny’s Byron wearily answers ‘John Murray is right, if not righteous’.40 Although Trelawny is notoriously unreliable, as Byron did write to Murray that he would no longer ‘make “Ladies books”’, there is perhaps an element of truth in this particular anecdote. Byron entrusted Shelley with the conveyance of Claire Clairmont’s fair copy of Childe Harold III to England. He also stipulated that Shelley should supervise the poem through the process of publication. Richard Holmes describes Shelley as the most ‘determinedly professional’ of all the English Romantic poets and this professionalism was evident in his care of the manuscript.41 He wrote regularly to assure Byron of its safety; the only incident he described was an investigation by ‘a greasy Custom-house officer’.42 Shelley also wrote to report on his first meeting 154

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with Murray. A resolute and ambitious poet, Shelley tried on several occasions to cultivate a relationship with a powerful publisher. In 1809 he wrote to Longmans to offer them an unfinished romance, possibly Zastrozzi, but was rejected.43 Not deterred, he offered Longmans Laon and Cythna and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, neither of which were accepted. In early 1816 he wrote to Murray, apologising for addressing the publisher ‘as a total stranger’ proposing to sell the copyright of Alastor.44 Shelley had printed 250 copies of the poem at his own expense, but Murray was not interested in the proposal. Shelley’s first meeting with Murray occurred on 11 September 1816, when he called at Albemarle Street to deliver Childe Harold III. Relaying news of their meeting to Byron, Shelley described Murray as having ‘expressed the greatest eagerness to see the poem’ and his behaviour as ‘exceedingly polite’.45 While he may have received Shelley courteously, Murray was less than gracious in writing about him to Byron, describing him as ‘a perfect wretch – without any homogenious [sic] qualities to compensate’ (LJM, 188). Murray clearly did not approve of Byron’s new associate, and although the poet had written to his publisher informing him that Shelley was ‘authorized to act’ for him in all matters regarding Childe Harold III, Murray systematically excluded Shelley from the process of publication (BLJ V, 90). The first stage of this exclusion was persuading Byron to allow Gifford rather than Shelley to correct the manuscript. This was not difficult. With characteristic hyperbole Murray wrote of how he was ‘thrilled with delight’ at the receipt of the manuscript and although he was ‘trembling’ with excitement ‘carried it direct to Mr Gifford’, who was so stunned by the poem he was ‘actually agitated … into a fever’ (LJM, 173). Murray was well aware of Byron’s susceptibility to flattery and his regard for Gifford, and concluded his letter by imploring the poet to give him the authority to ‘give the entire exclusive reading of the proofs to Mr Gifford alone’ (LJM, 173). Byron responded that he was ‘very much flattered’ and agreed to Murray’s request (BLJ V, 105). Although Shelley wrote to Murray to give him his address for forwarding the proofs, he did not hear anything from the publisher and was surprised to see newspaper advertisements announcing the publication of Childe Harold III. Unaware of the communications between Byron and Murray, Shelley wrote to Albemarle Street to remind the publisher that it had been Byron’s ‘particular desire’ that he should supervise the proofs. Shelley wrote that he stated his claim to the supervision of the manuscripts based on Byron’s wishes, not because he would ‘pay more attention to its accuracy than any person 155

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whom [Murray] might select’; nevertheless he added a pointed postscript noting that it ‘is advertised as “The Prisoners of Chillon”’. Lord Byron wrote it ‘Prisoner’.46 It was too late for Shelley to secure his involvement; Murray had already sent the poems to be printed. It is important to note that Murray’s actions were facilitated by Byron’s hesitant instructions regarding the poem. Shelley clearly believed that Byron intended him to supervise the publication, but Byron’s letter of instruction to Murray was vague. The poet specified that he wished Gifford to read the manuscript, before adding, ‘I know not well to whom to consign the proofs – nor indeed who would be good natured enough to overlook it in its progress … Perhaps – my friend Mr Moore (if in town) … If not – Mr S[helley] will take it upon himself’ (BLJ V, 90). Replacing Shelley with Gifford was one of a series of actions by Murray that illustrate his ‘attitude of proprietorship’ towards Byron.47 The publisher felt bound to his most famous author, personally and professionally. The feeling was, to a degree, mutual. One of the advantages of his association with Murray for Byron was that it served as a brand authenticator. Disavowing one of the numerous works falsely attributed to him, Byron wrote to Murray ‘I consider myself responsible for no publication from the year 1812 up to the present date which is not from your press’ (BLJ V, 139). One of Byron’s major concerns after the separation scandal was that Murray would suffer commercially because of their association. In negotiating the price for the copyright of Childe Harold III, Byron was anxious that Murray would not lose any money. He wrote to his publisher that ‘nothing could mortify me more – no failure on my own part – than having made you lose by any purchase from me’ (BLJ V, 106). Byron emphasised this point to Douglas Kinnaird, ‘I would not on any account have him a loser – nor hard driven in a bargain on my account’ (BLJ V, 106–107). Murray’s offer for the copyright of Childe Harold III was generous; an examination of his letters proves this generosity was strategic. In his letter of 12 September 1816, Murray writes that his offer is 1,200 guineas. Close reading of the letter shows that 1,200 was written over 1,500, which Murray had scratched out. In the next letter, of 20 September, Murray writes to raise his offer to 1,500 guineas based on his own reading of the canto (LJM, 176). Clearly, Murray used money as a barometer of success. In the event, he was to pay 2,000 guineas for the copyright of Childe Harold III and The Prisoner of Chillon after Shelley and Byron’s attorney Douglas Kinnaird secured a higher price. Murray did not lose by the transaction; he sold 7,000 copies of each poem alone at a bookseller’s dinner. 156

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Murray’s annual trade dinners were legendary within publishing circles. Held at the Albion Tavern in Aldersgate Street, the lavish meals would cost him between £300–£400; a large sum but a trifle in comparison to what he would make in sales. After the coffee was served, the books on sale were described and large discounts offered for bulk orders. On these occasions Murray routinely sold books to the value of over £20,000. These events reinforced Murray’s reputation for lavish hospitality, or ‘munificent liberality’.48 After dining at Albemarle Street James Hogg recalled ‘Eh, man, it was such a dinner, and such drink, as nae words can describe’.49 Of the trade dinners, James Grant remarked that ‘nothing on earth contributes so much to the pre-disposition to purchase on a large scale, as a first-rate dinner, followed by oceans of wines’.50 Murray gleefully reported his success to Byron, describing how he sold ‘after the first Pint Five Thousand Pounds Worth of thy Poetry’ – excluding the new poems. In a rather tactless comparison considering the state of Byron’s domestic affairs, Murray wished the poet ‘the perpetuity of St Leon’ to continue to write (LJM, 181, 180). Murray’s belief that he was chief proprietor and guardian of Byron’s works caused problems between poet and publisher, principally because it led Murray to feel entitled to safeguard Byron’s popularity by removing sections of poems he felt would interfere with their sale. A serious instance of this tampering with Byron’s text came with The Prisoner of Chillon when Murray, acting on Gifford’s advice, removed two lines from the poem. The offending lines (388 and 389) emphasised the prisoner’s humanity with clear criticism of monarchy: ‘Nor slew I of my subjects, one / What Sovereign hath so little done? (CPW IV, 449). Byron did not give his authorisation for these lines to be omitted, and he was beginning to suspect that Murray ‘as a Tory’ was ‘softening’ his manuscripts (BLJ V, 159). His suspicions were aroused because Murray had not written for almost a month. Murray’s last letter, 13 December 1816, had thanked Byron for his ‘indulgent kindness’ and explained that his infrequent communications were due to the fact that he first wanted to ‘ascertain the opinions of the knowing ones’ (LJM, 180). The ‘knowing ones’ were the circle of writers and critics who frequented Murray’s drawing room at Albemarle Street, including Gifford, Walter Scott, John Hookham Frere, John Cam Hobhouse, Samuel Rogers and Thomas Moore. These men formed what Byron would later call his ‘cursed puritanical committee’ and often acted as advisors to Murray, especially in matters concerning his most famous poet (BLJ VI, 99). Murray’s delay in writing caused Byron to suggest that the publisher was possessed by ‘the Demon of 157

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Silence’ and increased his worry that his poems had failed (BLJ V, 151). He wrote to Douglas Kinnaird about the ‘fall of the thermometer of a poetical reputation’ and claimed that although he would not be upset for himself, he would be ‘sorry for M[urray] who is a very good fellow’ (BLJ V, 161). This concern for his publisher may go some way to explain why Byron did not object too strenuously upon the realisation that Murray had omitted the lines from The Prisoner of Chillon, despite his vow not to pardon the publisher if he found out he had altered his work. In response to Byron’s querying his actions, Murray replied that he had only removed the lines as a temporary measure because he had ‘a great stake in the instant popularity’ of the volume and assured the poet that they would be ‘restored in a new Edition’.51 Murray was candid regarding the fact that he acted ‘purely for [his] own interest’ and advised Byron to ‘consider [his] publisher and be pacified’ (LJM, 187). Byron often considered his publisher; he knew that Murray’s name was linked to his own and that the decline in his reputation might affect Murray’s business. Considering Murray’s negligence in writing to Byron, and the poet’s reliance on him for news of his work, Byron was often exceptionally lenient with his publisher. Having not received a letter for weeks, Byron wrote: ‘I am determined to have my revenge in postage … As the news of Venice must be very interesting to you I will regale you with it’ (BLJ V, 151). Even Murray was surprised by the poet’s good humour and ‘extreme forbearance’, acknowledging that he ‘expected a Shot … that would have shivered all my nerves in return for my baseness in not answering your many most obliging and delightful letters’ (LJM, 180).Byron’s letters of this period are greatly preoccupied with what he perceived to be his diminishing commercial appeal and the potential consequences for Murray, but he need not have worried. Murray had secured his place as one of the leading publishers in London and by his own admission was ‘continually harrassed [sic] by Shoals of MSS Poems’ (LJM, 188).52 It was the knowledge of how much Byron had helped to establish Murray’s reputation that led Hobhouse to remind the poet that the publisher ‘flourishes exceedingly’. Hobhouse often wrote of Murray’s financial success in order to ease Byron’s conscience, most explicitly with remarks such as ‘Don’t be afraid, draw away – you have made the man’s fortune’.53 Following the publication of the third canto of Childe Harold, Byron’s next work was once again directly influenced by his surroundings in Switzerland and the painful break-up of his marriage. Drawing 158

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inspiration from his ‘Alpine Journal’ written for Augusta Leigh, Byron sent the journal to Murray who wrote that that it delighted him. He advised Byron ‘there is a poem in it’ (LJM, 182). Byron had realised that already, having begun ‘a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of introducing the Alpine scenery in description’ (BLJ V, 188). This was Manfred, a Gothic drama in three acts depicting the psychological torment of its protagonist. Byron kept his journal from 17 to 29 September 1816. It describes a tour of the Alps and begins with Byron in tourist mode as he recounts his trip to Mont Blanc, Clarens and Chillon. He describes ‘Scenery worthy of I know not whom’ and his amusement at seeing an English woman ‘fast asleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world’ (BLJ V, 97). Amidst imaginative and poetic portrayals of the environment, Byron could not bring himself to forget his domestic affairs. The ‘whole woods of withered pines – all withered’ reminded him of himself and his family; the genesis of Manfred is most clearly apparent in the conclusion to the journal: I am a lover of Nature – and an Admirer of Beauty … and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But all this – the recollections of bitterness – & more especially of recent & more home desolation – which must accompany me through life – have preyed upon me here – and neither the music of the Shepherd – the crashing of the Avalanche – nor the torrent – the mountain – the Glacier – the Forest – nor the Cloud – have for one moment – lightened the weight upon my heart – nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty & the power and the Glory – around – above – & beneath me. (BLJ V, 104–105)

Manfred is a poem about a man desperately trying to forget. The work was heavily influenced by Goethe’s Faust, which Byron had heard recited by Matthew Lewis. Goethe himself admired Manfred, noting that Byron ‘has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strangest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour’.54 Year later, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed superiority for Manfred, writing ‘I have no words, just a look for those who, in the presence of Manfred, can dare to utter the word “Faust”’.55 Manfred is quintessentially Byronic: a darkly charismatic figure who struggles with a guilty conscience but differs from earlier versions of the character type by demonstrating sharp intelligence and a powerful Promethean will. The poem has often been read as a decisive and final rejection of ‘the Wordsworthian and Shelleyan notions of Childe Harold, Canto III’ and shows Byron turning back to the themes of his earlier work; he admitted to Murray that it was perhaps ‘too much in my old style’ 159

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(BLJ V, 185).56 Still, the influence of Shelley is unmistakable in the figure of Astarte. Manfred describes her as:      like me in lineaments – her eyes, Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone Even of her voice, they said were like to mine; But soften’d all, and temper’d into beauty. (II.ii.105–108)

Shelley would later write in an essay ‘On Love’: We are born into the world and there is something within us which from the instant that we live and move thirsts after its likeness … We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise …57

Manfred’s remorse over the death of his sister leads to his alienation from society, and although he is haunted by sexual guilt and driven by a desire for self-annihilation, he remains rebellious and defiant to the end, refusing to yield to any authority. It is an excessive, Romantic, exaggerated piece of Gothic drama and is in many ways the zenith of the Byronic hero. As Andrew Rutherford states, Manfred is a ‘supreme attempt to claim significance for the character of the Byronic hero’.58 Although he would eventually come to regard Manfred as ‘one of the best of my misbegotten’, Byron was initially unsure about the work (BLJ V, 249). Announcing its completion, he told Murray that he had ‘no great opinion of this piece of phantasy’ and twice gave him permission to ‘put it in the fire’ (BLJ V, 170, 193). He confided in his publisher that he had ‘really & truly no notion whether it is good or bad’ and asked Murray to show it to Gifford (BLJ V, 183). In a clear demonstration of his misgivings, and because he felt ‘inclined to rank it but humbly’, Byron proposed the relatively small sum of 300 guineas for the copyright if Murray deemed the poem suitable for publication (BLJ V, 183). He also suggested that Murray might consider publishing it as part of a volume, rather than separately (BLJ V, 193). As we have seen in previous chapters, this tactic was a sure indication of Byron’s unease. On receipt of Manfred, Murray immediately gave the poem to Gifford, who saw serious problems with the third act. He felt that it was much too short in proportion to the first two and that the Friar ‘should be a real good man – not an idiot’ (LJM, 220). Murray wrote to Byron that this was a difficulty he must surmount and promised not to show the final act to anyone until the poet had made ‘it what it ought to be’ (LJM, 223). Instead of his usual practice of paraphrasing Gifford’s criticism in his own letters, Murray sent Gifford’s letter directly to Byron. He also 160

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sent a letter he had received from John Wilson Croker, who had read the first two acts, urging Murray to ensure that Byron continue with his tragedy. Although Croker’s letter is complimentary to Byron, the real force of it is his description of Murray as one who spoke ‘with the voice of the public’ (LJM, 225). This cannot have been lost on Byron, who instantly acquiesced to Gifford’s recommendations, pronouncing the act ‘d----d bad’ and agreeing to ‘reform it – or re-write it altogether’ (BLJ V, 211). Byron revised the third act extensively and the poem was published in June 1817.59 He received 600 guineas for the copyright, a fee that included the rights to The Lament of Tasso, on the condition that Murray could publish both poems on his own terms; this was of course as separate volumes. The 300 guineas Byron received for Manfred was the lowest fee he had yet received for a work published by Murray. Interestingly, the money that Murray spent advertising Manfred was (by some distance) the lowest total he had ever spent on a work of Byron’s. Murray’s ledger shows a total of £30 spent on advertising Manfred. To put this in context, the advertising for The Giaour cost £300, for The Corsair £310 and a combined total of £340 for the third canto of Childe Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon. Was Murray unsure about a work that contemporary critics identified as holding ‘a middle place between the Tales of Byron, and Childe Harold’? (RR, B: II, 897). There is no doubt about what Murray thought of Manfred, because he told Byron emphatically: ‘it is a wild and delightful thing & I like it myself – hugely’ (LJM, 215). Manfred received a warm critical reception but it was not as commercially successful as Byron’s previous works. Murray sought to ease Byron’s disappointment by advising him that because the poems are ‘greatly admired by the best Critics’, they naturally ‘soar above the Million’ (LJM, 234). He attempted to explain why this was the case: All the higher critics such as Frere are in extacy [sic] with it averring that it places you far above all your former efforts – but it is not so popular with the general reader because the[y] go through it at once expecting to find their pleasure in the intricacy & interest of the plot – & being therein disappointed – they do not recur to the beauties which they had hastily passed over – to conclude it is less popular but more praise. (LJM, 242)

This distinction between a popular readership and selective critical approval was to become a familiar theme in Murray’s letters to Byron over the next few years, and it began to impact on the way publisher and author interacted with each other. Byron became less patient with Murray, much more interested in the commercial side of his work, and 161

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(at the expense of his own opinion) Murray began to place his faith even more in the judgement of his advisors. On Gifford’s advice, Murray published Manfred without Manfred’s dying address to the abbot: ‘Old man! ’tis not so difficult to die’ (III, iv, 151). When Byron finally received a copy of the poem he was furious to see the last line had not been printed. In what constituted one of the most serious disagreements between poet and publisher, he angrily wrote that Murray had ‘destroyed the whole effect & moral of the poem by omitting the last line of Manfred’s speaking’ (BLJ V, 257). Perhaps understandably, given that he had been accustomed to Byron’s ‘usual indulgence’ in editorial matters, Murray was deeply offended by this rebuke (LJM, 202). He replied that the line was removed because both he and Gifford felt that it ‘lessened the effect’ of the poem and had neglected to mention it because he felt it was ‘trivial’ (LJM, 202). In an obvious allusion to what Murray felt was their ‘personal attachment’, he confessed to a ‘deep regret’ that Byron could ‘cut’ him as if he were a ‘Taylor [sic]’ (LJM, 242). This is one of Murray’s most revealing letters. He challenges Byron’s treatment of him as if he was a tradesman and claims a position among the poet’s intimate friends. Murray felt this friendship entitled him to interfere with Byron’s poetry; he was surprised to find that Byron did not agree. This clash between friendship and professional conduct would continue to cause difficulties. In December 1816 Murray informed Byron that he was calculating on a fourth Canto of Childe Harold by September 1817. Amused, Byron replied that he had ‘no thoughts of resuming that poem’ and speculated that, in reality, Murray was ‘afraid of having a 4th. Canto before September – & of another copyright’ (BLJ V, 157). Murray assured Byron that he was ‘perfectly ready to undergo the Copyright of as many Cantos of Childe Harold – or any other Poem – as fast as they are compleated’, but reminded Byron that ‘we have got to heap Ossa on Pelion – the higher the pile already – the far greater our future labour’ (LJM, 189). Delighted with Byron’s descriptions of Venice in his letters, Murray’s wish was for the poet to add to the pile with a ‘good Venetian Tale’, a request that has often been supposed to have prompted the composition of Beppo. In fact, Murray did more to encourage Byron to write Beppo than this one comment, he asked Byron for a tale set in Venice on three separate occasions (LJM, 190, 206, 222). Although Byron was beginning to turn away from popular literature, rebuking Murray for sending him ‘trash’ and claiming that all poets were on a ‘wrong revolutionary 162

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poetical system’, he took the hint and wrote a poem based on a story that had amused him (BLJ V, 262–267). Again, as Beppo represented a new departure for him, Byron was unsure about its merits and included it in the copyright of Childe Harold IV. In his letters of this period Byron often refers to Beppo in terms that make it seem like an insurance policy in case Childe Harold IV failed to sell. He writes that he will ‘throw [it] into the balance of the 4th Canto’ and, more explicitly, that he ‘threw in “Beppo” to eke [Murray] out in case of accidents’ (BLJ V, 269; BLJ VI, 39). He also requested that it should be published anonymously, and it appeared as such on 28 February 1818. The negotiations between poet and publisher regarding the copyright and publication of the fourth canto of Childe Harold saw Byron directly engage with the commercial dimension of his work. As Caroline Franklin writes of the poet’s behaviour during this time, ‘he not only accepted but threw himself with gusto into the role of paid professional’.60 Even before he decided on ‘probable length or calibre of ye. canto – or what it will be good for’, Byron promised Murray that he would be ‘as mercenary as possible’ (BLJ V, 244). Proving this was no idle promise, Byron refused Murray’s initial offer of 1,500 guineas for the copyright and demanded 2,500. He also advised Murray to ‘venture on an edition of the whole poem in quarto – with spare copies of the two last for the purchasers of the old edition of the first two. – There is a hint for you worthy of the Row’ (BLJ V, 254). Byron later recalled that Murray reminded him of his own lines against mercenary authors in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but with little effect. Byron had decided there was ‘no reason why a man should not profit by the sweat of his brain, as well as that of his brow’, and moreover, that he had no inclination to continue ‘aggrandizing booksellers’.61 Throughout this period Byron’s language becomes increasingly mercantile when discussing his poetry with Murray. He also challenges Murray’s reasoning when it comes to deciding copyright fees. Annoyed at what he perceived was a low offer for Childe Harold IV, he wrote: If Mr Moore is to have three thousand for Lallah &c. – if Mr Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose on poetry – I don’t mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours – but I ask the aforesaid price for mine. – You tell me that their productions are considerably longer – very true & when they shorten them – I will lengthen mine, and ask less. (BLJ V, 263)

Byron’s engagement with the marketplace is evident in letters of this kind to Murray, and is wonderfully expressed in a poem written in the voice of the publisher. 163

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Murray had received a play from Byron’s physician, John Polidori, which he had no intention of accepting for publication as he felt that Polidori was ‘not without literary talents’ but was ‘truly sorry that he will employ himself in a way so ill suited to his genius’ (LJM, 234). In a letter of 5 August 1817 Murray asked Byron to send him ‘a delicate declention’ of the play that he could copy and send to Polidori. On 21 August Byron replied, ‘You want a “civil and delicate declension” for the medical tragedy? Take it –’ and sent a brilliantly realised poetic parody of Murray himself. Ninety lines of rhyming couplets beginning with ‘Dear Doctor – I have read your play’ saw Byron effortlessly ventriloquise his publisher (BLJ V, 258–261). Byron often wrote poetry within his letters to Murray and several are directly addressed to the publisher, but this one is by far the best and easily the funniest. Byron’s affectionate impression of Murray captures the publisher’s meandering way of dealing with authors and gives a myriad of reasons for declining the manuscript, including recent losses: ‘I had a heavy loss by “Manuel” – / Too lucky if it prove not annual’. The poet includes a witty reference to himself and to Manfred as Byron-asMurray writes: There’s Byron – too – who once did better Has sent me – folded in a letter – A sort of – it’s no more a drama Than Darnley – Ivan – or Kehama – So altered since last year his pen is – I think he’s lost his wits at Venice – Or drained his brains away as Stallion To some dark-eyed & warm Italian.

The poem satirises the publisher’s tendency to reference his drawing room and the famous men who frequented it: ‘The Room’s so full of wits & bards – / Crabbes – Campbells – Crokers – Freres – & Wards’, before concluding by poking fun at one of Murray’s habitual complaints: My hands are full – my head so busy – I’m almost dead – & always dizzy – And so with endless truth & hurry – Dear Doctor – I am yours           John Murray

Murray’s letter of 9 September 1817 acknowledging his receipt of this poem is the last surviving letter of his to Byron for eight months. For their correspondence regarding the publication of Beppo, and the fourth 164

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Fig. 7 Byron to John Murray, 21 August 1817. JMA, MS. 43489.

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Canto of Childe Harold, we must rely on Byron’s letters. A poem written by Byron to Murray in early 1818 reveals the publisher’s impatience for the manuscript of Childe Harold: My dear Mr Murray, You’re in a damned hurry To set up this ultimate Canto, But (if they don’t rob us) You’ll see Mr Hobhouse Will bring it safe in his portmanteau. (BLJ VI, 3)

Byron wrote to Murray that he felt he would ‘never do better’ than Childe Harold, and the fourth instalment was considered by Gifford ‘beyond question, the first of his efforts’ (BLJ V, 265, LJM, 249). The concluding canto once again explored the theme of reputation, and contemplates the possibility of artistic immortality. In the prefatory dedication to Hobhouse, Byron explained that he has all but surrendered the use of Harold throughout the poem as he ‘had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive’ (CPW II, 122). He followed this admission by declaring that ‘the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors’. The poet moves through Italy, describing scenes in Venice, Florence and primarily Rome. Towards the conclusion to the poem, Byron forcefully emphasises his belief in the endurance of his work: But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain; But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remember’d tone of a mute lyre … (IV.137)

Tensions between Byron and Murray increased dramatically in 1818 as the publisher failed to write to his poet about the fate of Childe Harold IV. Byron felt he had been lenient, even generous with Murray; however, the lack of communication from London became an increasing source of irritation and worry. Byron wrote to Moore of Murray’s ‘horrid stillness’, and then convinced himself that the publisher did not write because he must have something ‘uncomfortable to say’ (BLJ VI, 46, 52). He wrote several times to say that he would prefer bad news to no news and, 170

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eventually, having received no communication from England for over six weeks, decided that he would ‘never forgive … any body … the atrocity of their late neglect’ (BLJ VI, 54). When Murray did not write, Byron was often left completely ignorant about the fate of his own works. It soon became intolerable to him. He wavered between assuming that Murray did not mention the poems because he did not want to hurt him and accusing him of ‘insolent neglect’ (BLJ VI, 56). By 30 June Byron’s patience had worn out and he issued Murray with an ultimatum; having already threatened to move to Longmans, he wrote that if he did not receive a letter in the next ten days he would terminate his association with Albemarle Street (BLJ VI, 57). Fortunately for Murray, his letter arrived in time, full of apologies for his inattention. Byron was relieved to finally hear from his publisher (‘Murray’s letters … are come – laud we the Gods!), and wrote a candid letter explaining how important it was that he should receive regular communications: If you would tell me exactly – (for I know nothing and have no correspondents except on business) – the state of the reception of our late publications & the feelings upon them – without consulting any delicacies – (I am too seasoned to require them) I should know how and in what manner to proceed. (BLJ VI, 61)

Even though it can only be speculation, Murray’s consistent failure to write to Byron on a regular basis merits investigation, particularly as he knew it generated such anxiety and tension. This anxiety was not just for want of news; Murray often failed to acknowledge the receipt of Byron’s poems, which caused him to worry that they had been lost in transit. The theory that comes most readily is that Murray was a busy man with a thriving business and had many more authors besides Byron to consider. While this is certainly true, it is not fair to suggest that Byron was demanding an undue level of attention from his publisher. Byron wrote countless letters to Murray acknowledging the demands on his time and suggesting that he ask his clerk to occasionally send him a few lines to assure him that his poems had arrived safely. For example: You are not expected to write frequent or long letters – as your time is much occupied – but when parcels that have cost some pains in the composition, & great trouble in the copying are sent to you I should at least be put out of Suspense by the immediate acknowledgement per return of post … All I desire is two lines to say – such a day I received such a packet – there are now at least six unacknowledged. – This is neither kind nor courteous … (BLJ VII, 77)

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Letters such as this clearly exonerate Byron from charges of making unreasonable demands upon Murray.62 A second explanation is Murray’s confession that the ‘sins of remissness in writing’ arose from ‘a love of indolence which is suffered too much to encrease’ (LJM, 256). It is certainly true that Murray preferred to do business face to face with his clients, and his lax communication was often a source of friction with other authors besides Byron. For instance, weary of disagreements and misunderstandings over the sale of the copyright to Emma, Jane Austen wrote to Murray that ‘[a] short conversation may perhaps do more than much writing’.63 Byron would later echo this sentiment by declaring ‘If I were alongside of him – I could deal with him’ (BLJ VIII, 205). We cannot wonder, then, that the most successful period of Byron and Murray’s relationship was the time when Byron could easily call on his publisher, or be assured that if he sent a communication via a messenger, that he would get a timely response. The most probable reason for Murray’s failure to keep Byron up to date in matters concerning his poetry was the fact that in Byron’s exile, he was far more than just his publisher. In London, Murray was an obvious point of contact for anyone who wanted to reach Byron or to hear news about him and the publisher was delighted to be in the privileged position of being one of Byron’s most frequent correspondents. Hobhouse wrote to warn Byron not to ‘write anything to Albemarle Street you do not wish to be seen by all the public offices’; however, Hobhouse clearly missed the point.64 Byron knew very well that any letter addressed to Murray would be read aloud to his circle in Albemarle Street; as Ian Jack states, the ‘letters to Murray … were not intended to be private’.65 Murray frequently reassured Byron that despite his absence, he was a constant presence in Albemarle Street: ‘All your old friends chez moi remember you & you are often the subject of their conversation – as their eye catches yours in the portrait’ (LJM, 190). Hobhouse attributed Murray’s behaviour in sharing the letters to personal vanity and claimed that ‘for the sake of a paragraph with “My dear M” in it’ he ‘would betray Christ himself’.66 There is more than a hint of jealousy and disapprobation in Hobhouse’s tone. Like many of Byron’s friends, he was horrified that the poet should communicate so frequently and frankly with his publisher. He instructed Byron that his ‘orders to Mr. Murray should be peremptory … as is fitting with these fellows’.67 Byron’s orders to Murray were anything but; in the main he wrote friendly and engaging letters on all aspects of his life abroad. In between Murray’s distributing his letters, sending him books and 172

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necessities and acting as a representative for the poet in London, it is not hard to imagine how he occasionally forgot to write to Byron about business matters. These possible explanations are not to excuse what Byron quite rightly termed ‘unbusinesslike’ conduct, but to suggest a reason for what could otherwise only be seen as inexplicable neglect (BLJ VII, 75). It is a coincidence, but a significant one, that just three days after Byron threatened to sever all connections with Murray he began the poem that would lead to their separation. On 3 July 1818 Byron began writing Don Juan. Notes 1 BLJ V, 151. 2 Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 21 December 1825. 3 Marchand, Byron, vol. II, p. 547. 4 Ibid., p. 510. 5 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, 2 January 1815. 6 Moore, Life, vol. II, p. 3. 7 Letters of Lady Caroline Lamb, p. 155. 8 Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity, p. 179. 9 Ibid., pp. 179–188. 10 Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History, p. 47. 11 Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity, p. 129. 12 Ernest Lowell Jr, ed., Medwin’s Conversations with Lord Byron (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 194. For contemporary accusations of plagiarism by The Critical Review, see RR, B: II, 658. 13 McGann, Fiery Dust, p. 117. 14 McGann, The Beauty of Inflections, p. 256. 15 Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity, p. 119. 16 Ibid., p.  119. 17 See for example McGann, Fiery Dust, pp. 36–37. 18 Johnson defined vanity as ‘Emptiness, Uncertainty, Inanity, Fruitless desire’. His ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ (1749) is an imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire ‘The Futility of Aspirations’. Similar to Childe Harold III, Johnson’s poem is concerned with the impermanence of fame and employs a series of images of rising and falling to convey his central theme: ‘They mount, they shine, evaporate and fall’ (76). 19 Vincent Newey, ‘Authoring the Self: Childe Harold III and IV’, Byron and the Limits of Fiction, ed. Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988) p. 154. 20 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 170. 21 Ibid., pp. 169–170. 22 Ibid., pp. 52, 89. 23 Jerome McGann, ‘What difference do the circumstances of publication make to the interpretation of a literary work?’, Byron and Romanticism, ed. James Soderholm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) p. 87.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay 24 Samuel Johnson, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ (ll. 18–20), Johnson, The Major Works, p. 12. 25 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols, ed. Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956–71) vol. 3, pp. 277–278. 26 I am grateful to David McClay for access to a complete list of Murray publications. 27 Augusta Leigh to John Murray, 23 April 1816, 30 June 1816. JMA, MS. 43482. 28 ‘Cambridge Pamphlets’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XI (1822), 740–741. 29 See Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, p. 291. 30 See Ibid., p. 238. 31 Scrope Davies arrived in London after Murray had already used Claire Clairmont’s copy to have the poem set in type. Davies retained possession of the MS and it was not seen again until it was discovered in the vaults of Barclays Bank in London in 1976. See The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III: A Facsimile of the Autograph Fair Copy Found in the ‘Scrope Davies’ Notebook. See also CPW II, 297–298. 32 See Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1975) p. 325. 33 Nora Crook, ‘Shelley and Women’, The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds. Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) p. 66. 34 Ibid., p.  66. 35 Ann Wroe, Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) p. 159. 36 Quotations from Shelley are taken from Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. 37 Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Volume 1: Shelley in England, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) pp. 506–507. 38 From Hazlitt’s review of Childe Harold IV: ‘Is there not a division of labour even on Mount Parnassus? The other writers of prose and verse, who enter the Temple of Fame by Mr Murray’s door in Albemarle Street, have their cues’. RR, B: V, 2336. 39 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 506–507. 40 E.J. Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (Williamstown: Corner House Publishers, 1975) pp. 35–36. 41 Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, p. ix. 42 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 504–505. 43 For more on Shelley’s relationship with his publishers see Stephen C. Behrendt, ‘Shelley and his Publishers’, The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Michael O’Neill and Andrew Howe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) pp. 83–97. 4 4 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 438. 45 Ibid., pp.  504–505. 46 Ibid., p.  511. 47 Peter Cochran, ‘Byron and the Politics of Editing’, Palgrave Advances in Byron Studies, ed. Jane Stabler (London: Palgrave, 2007) p. 48. 48 Grant, Portraits of Public Characters, vol. 2, p. 13. 49 Ibid., p.  10. 50 Ibid., pp.  11–12. 51 Murray never restored the lines. They were reinstated by Jerome McGann in his complete edition of Byron’s poems. See CPW IV, 449.

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by ron i n e x i l e 52 For specific details regarding the falling appeal of Byron’s works after the separation scandal derived from production figures and prices see St Clair, Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 585. 53 Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, p. 231. 54 See extract from Goethe’s review of Manfred in Byron: The Critical Heritage, p. 119. 55 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 26. 56 Rutherford, Byron: A Critical Study, p. 81. 57 Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘On Love’, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, p. 504. 58 Rutherford, Byron, p. 78. 59 For the original version of the third act, see CPW IV, 467–471. 60 Franklin, Byron: A Literary Life, p. 48. 61 Lovell, Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron, pp. 168–169. 62 See also Letter from Byron to John Murray, 29 June 1821: ‘I know that a bookseller in large business – must have his time too over-occupied to answer every body himself’ (BLJ VIII, 144–145). 63 Jane Austen, Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) p. 295. 64 The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, p. 283. 65 Jack, A Poet and his Audience, p. 73. 66 Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, p. 283. 67 Ibid., p.  291.

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‘a book without a bookseller’1 ‘a book without a bookseller’ Throughout his career, Byron was subjected to repeated calls to undertake the composition of a major work worthy of his talent. Murray and Gifford tried on several occasions to entice Byron with the possibilities that an epic poem would offer, but to no avail. Responding to a suggestion that he should ‘occupy some Six or Eight years in the Composition of a Work’, Byron replied, ‘I’ll try no such thing – I hate tasks – and then “seven or eight years!” God send us all well this day three months –’ (LJM, 269; BLJ VI, 105). P.B. Shelley constantly reminded Byron of the magnitude of his poetic gifts and urged him to use them properly: You have already given evidence of very uncommon powers … What would the human race have been if Homer, or Shakespeare, had never written? or if any false modesty, or mistake of their own powers, had withheld them from consummating those unequalled achievements of mind by which we are so deeply benefited? … I only know that your powers are astonishingly great, and that they ought to be exerted to their full extent.2

Earlier in this letter Shelley had suggested that what Byron had already achieved was ‘disproportionate’ to the effort he put into his writing. Byron would have agreed. Much of his later career was spent contemplating the nature of his work, and blaming himself for writing most of the ‘exaggerated nonsense which has corrupted the public taste’ (BLJ IX, 161). He was certain that the tepid response to his dramas was a punishment for ‘spoiling’ his readers and asserted that ‘no man has contributed more’ than he had with his ‘earlier compositions to produce that exaggerated & false taste’ (BLJ IX, 161). Given this conviction, it is not surprising that Byron should have found himself thinking of his earliest work, particularly of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and the unpublished Hints from Horace. Although he always regretted the personal attacks in English Bards he never regretted the central impulse of the poem: to correct degenerate public taste. In response to Murray’s sending him new publications 176

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which he dismissed as ‘trash’, Byron wrote on four occasions of the need for a new and more vigorous English Bards (BLJ VIII, 206, 221, 224, 236). He also considered publishing Hints from Horace and instructed Murray to set it in type (BLJ VII, 60, 179). Byron’s Letter to John Murray Esqre. (1821) was a vigorous defence of Pope and illustrated his intention to engage in battle against what he perceived to be corrupt literary taste. Murray encouraged him in this, claiming that the works he sent were not occasioned by ‘bad taste’ but were sent ‘on purpose’ to ‘provoke’ Byron’s ‘contempt’ and give him material ‘for a new Baviad w[hi]ch we very much need to flap away a nest of pretenders’ (LJM, 354). Jane Stabler rightly sees Murray’s enthusiasm for this project as evidence of the publisher’s desire to steer Byron away from involvement with English and Italian politics and towards a poem that would allow him to ‘inveigh against prevailing codes of social morality and taste’.3 Byron did not need to publish Hints from Horace to protest against the morality of the time; he already had, with Don Juan, a poem that was written ‘first to correct the literary practices of the day; and second, to expose the social corruption which supports such practices’.4 Byron initially claimed that he began Don Juan because he was ‘encouraged by the good success’ of Beppo and wanted to write a poem in the same style which was ‘meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing’ (BLJ VI, 67). Murray was delighted to hear of the ‘cheering notice’ of a new poem in the style of Beppo, but Byron was worried that the ‘damned Cant and Toryism of the day may make Murray pause’ (LJM, 263; BLJ VI, 76–77). Byron’s fear that Murray would hesitate meant that the parcel of manuscripts that arrived at Albemarle Street on 26 December 1818 was addressed not to his publisher, but to John Cam Hobhouse. On 29 December Hobhouse wrote to Byron acknowledging receipt of the poetry, and reminding him that Murray would most likely publish anything of his. According to Hobhouse, ‘The Hitch will not come thence – so be tranquil’5 Hobhouse was right, the ‘hitch’ came from Hobhouse himself, and his ‘humble advisers’ – Scrope Berdmore Davies and John Hookham Frere. A few days later, on 5 January 1819, Hobhouse wrote a long letter to Byron outlining the various reasons why Don Juan was ‘impossible to publish’.6 While he conceded that Byron had ‘perhaps’ found his ‘real forte in this singular style’, he raised a catalogue of objections including ‘the sarcasms against the lady of Seaham’ (Lady Byron), ‘the licentiousness and in some cases downright indecency of many stanzas’, ‘the flings at religion’, ‘the slashing right and left at other worthy writers of the day’, in short, ‘the immoral 177

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turn of the whole poem’. Hobhouse advised ‘a total suppression of Don Juan’. In this opinion he was joined by Frere and Davies. He managed to persuade Douglas Kinnaird and John Murray to change their initial opinion of the poem (following his first reading, Kinnaird had written to Byron ‘the revolution is coming’) and to join them in advocating its suppression.7 Crucially, Hobhouse added that Murray ‘will publish’, but ‘he has, on my representation, the same sentiments as myself’. In his diary, Hobhouse further recorded that Frere had joined him in strongly objecting to Murray.8 There are no letters from Murray to Byron extant between October and March 1819, so we do not have direct evidence of his initial reaction to Don Juan. We do have a diary entry from Hobhouse the day after the manuscript arrived, noting that ‘Murray called and wanted to advertise at once’.9 We also have, in the letters leading up to the publication of Don Juan, clear evidence of Murray’s high regard for the poem. In March, he wrote to Byron that it was ‘exceedingly good – & the power with which you alternately make ones [sic] blood thrill & our Sides Shake is very great … It probably surpasses in talent any thing that you ever wrote’ (LJM, 273). Byron’s reply to Hobhouse’s letter was the first in a series of vehement defences of Don Juan. He flatly refused to have the poem censored and revelled in his defiance, reminding his friends that he had been ‘cloyed with applause & sickened with abuse’ and was prepared to stand his ground (BLJ VI, 91). In truth, he was seriously discouraged by the negative reaction and found it difficult to copy the second canto ‘from natural laziness – and the discouragement of the milk & water they have thrown on the first’ (BLJ VI, 99). Byron was particularly annoyed that his detractors had readily admitted the genius of the work, but objected on the grounds of morality: ‘If they had told me the poetry was bad – I would have acquiesced – but they say the contrary – & then talk to me about morality’ (BLJ VI, 99). Byron’s letters of this period show him continually changing his mind about his plans for the poem and his intentions for publication. He finally decided to ask Murray to print fifty copies for private circulation. Predictably, he was kept waiting for a response, which only irritated him further. Exasperated with trying to deal with a publisher who by his own admission was too lazy at times to write to him, Byron had begun to deal with Murray through Douglas Kinnaird. Byron met the ‘hot and fiery Douglas’ Kinnaird at Cambridge, but associated most closely with him in London in 1814, regularly attending parties with Kinnaird and his mistress, the actress Maria Keppel (BLJ 178

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VI, 136). Kinnaird became, in Byron’s words, ‘my friend, – my trustee, my Power of Attorney – and my Banker’ (BLJ VI, 87). Kinnaird is one of Byron’s principal correspondents and had the unenviable task of managing Byron’s chaotic finances after the poet left England. Murray and Kinnaird had an uneasy relationship; Kinnaird described the publisher as a ‘sad man of business’, and Murray wrote to Byron that ‘I don’t know you when I negotiate with Mr Kinnaird’ (LJM, 388).10 It is likely that Murray’s reaction to Kinnaird was partly caused by pique at Byron using an intermediary, and also because of Kinnaird’s frank admission that ‘I deal with him as between a Gentleman & a Tradesman’.11 Kinnaird also sought to exploit Murray’s long standing connection with Byron, claiming that it was the publisher’s ‘duty to offer … more than any other bookseller would give’.12 Byron had become weary of Murray’s lack of communication; he bitterly wrote to Kinnaird ‘if the tradesman don’t [sic] understand civility – change him – he is but a sort of intellectual tailor’ (BLJ VI, 103). As Byron grew increasingly sensitive regarding Don Juan, his letters to Murray resonated with self-justification. The following is particularly revealing of Byron’s contempt for the reading public and for popularity: I have not written for their pleasure; – if they are pleased – it is that they chose to be so, – I have never flattered their opinions – nor their pride – nor will I. – Neither will I make “Ladies books” … I know the precise worth of popular applause – for few Scribblers have had more of it … They made me without my search a species of popular Idol – they – without reason or judgement beyond the caprice of their Good pleasure – threw down the Image from It’s [sic] pedestal – it was not broken with the fall – and they would it seems again replace it – but they shall not. (BLJ VI, 106)

Despite their disagreements, Byron sensed that Murray was fearful about publication and wrote to reassure him: ‘don’t you be out of sorts – I never vex you wilfully … Don’t suppose I want to put you out of humour’. The letter concluded with Byron asserting his friendship for his publisher, and his assessment of Murray’s character: I have a great respect for your good & gentlemanly qualities – & return your personal friendship towards me – and although I think you are a little spoilt by “villainous company” – Wits – persons of honour about town – authors – and fashionables – together with your “I am just going to call at Carlton House [;] are you walking that way?” I say notwithstanding your “pictures – taste – Shakespeare – and the musical glasses” – you deserve and possess the esteem of those whose esteem it is worth having – and of none more (however useless it may be) than yrs. very truly B[yron]. (BLJ, VI, 123)

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Byron’s assessment of Murray was probably quite close to the truth. While he articulates feelings of friendship and affection for the man who had published his work for seven years, here Byron reveals what he considered Murray’s greatest defect – that he was overly prone to influence from ‘villainous company’. For want of a better mode of expression, Byron felt that Murray was, on occasion, far too pleased with himself and the company he kept. In the face of objections from Hobhouse and Murray, Byron was insistent that Don Juan would not be ‘mutilated’, but he consented to anonymous publication (BLJ VI, 91). The poem was published on Thursday 15 July, 1819. In the summer of 1819 many newspapers reported on the appearance of a comet that could be seen from England and Europe. The Morning Chronicle published daily reports, described sightings, and several other newspapers were intrigued by ‘this most interesting celestial stranger’.13 As Jerome Christensen observes, the coincidence ‘between the arrival of the meteor and poem provided the kind of advertising money cannot buy’.14 In the days leading up to publication, Murray embarked on a tantalising advertising campaign. On 12 July, at the top of the centre column on the front page of The Times, it simply stated ‘ON THURSDAY, DON JUAN, – Sold by all Booksellers’. The Wednesday before publication, ‘TO-MORROW, DON JUAN’, naturally followed by ‘THIS DAY, DON JUAN’ on Thursday 15th. Hobhouse was impressed with Murray’s endeavours, telling Byron that he may depend on ‘a great sensation’. The publisher had ‘managed so well that Mazeppa was taken for Don Juan and greadily [sic] bought up’.15 Murray wrote to Byron that ‘La Sort est jetté [sic]’ and ‘having fired the Bomb’ he retreated to his house in Wimbledon ‘out of the way of its explosion’. Murray extended the analogy between Byron and the comet by reminding the poet that ‘though the most minute particle of the Comets Tale [sic] – yet I rise and fall with it – & my interest in your soaring above other Stars – & continuing to create wonder even in your aberrations – is past calculation’ (LJM, 275). Murray had published Don Juan in an expensive quarto edition, costing £1 1s 6d. When Byron said that he wanted Don Juan to be a ‘poetical T[ristram] Shandy’ it is doubtful that the comparison he had in mind was a material one (BLJ X, 150). The first two cantos of the poem were published with typographical features similar to Sterne’s novel, such as blank pages and asterisks. Byron’s name did not appear on the title page; neither did John Murray’s. Hobhouse believed that the absence of the publisher’s name was intended to ‘increase the mystification’, and that ‘the asterisks 180

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are wonderfully better calculated to inflame curiosity’.16 Byron was incensed at what he perceived to be Murray’s disowning the poem, later writing that he did ‘not approve of … not putting publisher’s names on title pages – (which was unheard of – till you gave yourself that air)’ (BLJ VIII, 232). Contemporary reviewers seized on the absence of the publisher’s name in order to categorise Don Juan as a monstrous birth: A thousand low and portentous murmurs preceded his birth … it was stated to be of a complexion so blasphemous, as even in these days of liberality, to endanger the personal security of the bookseller … Paternoster-row was paralysed … Fearful indeed was the prodigy – a book without a bookseller: an advertisement without an advertiser – a “deed without a name.” After all this portentous parturition, out creeps DON JUAN. (RR, B: I, 296)

Contemporary reviewers wrote of how the publisher had ‘refused his obstetric aid to the obscure and ditch delivered foundling’ (RR, B: I, 308). The effect was clear; as the Eclectic Review summarised, the poem had ‘been permitted to steal its way into circulation under an implied sentence of condemnation and reproach’ (RR, B: I, 792). The large quarto page of high-quality paper with Davison’s finest printing ‘looks quite pure, with only seventeen words scattered over its surface’, but with no authors name, no publishers name, and lines censored with asterisks, readers knew what to think of Don Juan before they had read a line of it. As William St Clair writes, it was ‘a book in rich dress presenting itself to Byron’s previous readership … but in other ways it looked like a gutter satire’.17 Douglas Kinnaird was angry at what he called Murray’s ‘extraordinary & unlooked for experimental’ publishing strategy, accusing the publisher of ‘a sordid calculation’. Kinnaird was convinced that the format was largely to blame for the uproar following publication: ‘I think the quarto edition has disgusted people, & has announced a pretension it never meant to put forth’.18 Murray was a clever and astute publisher, but he was forced to field several complaints that he had grossly mismanaged the publication of Don Juan. John Wilson Croker was astonished at what he called ‘a great injustice’ against the poem; he wrote to Murray asking If you print & sell Tom Jones & Peregrine Pickle why did you start at Don Juan? why smuggle it into the world &, as it were, pronounce it illegitimate in its birth, & induce so many of the learned rabble, when they could find so little specific offence in it, to refer to its supposed original state, as one of original sin. (SS I, 413–416)

Croker found Don Juan ‘very little offensive’, ‘a more innocent production 181

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than “Childe Harold”’, and claimed that if Murray ‘had published “Don Juan” without hesitation or asterisks, nobody would have ever thought worse of it than as a longer Beppo, gay and lively and a little loose’.19 The choices Murray made regarding the first two cantos of Don Juan were a material reflection of what Byron called his ‘shuffling’. The fine paper, printing and quarto publication clearly indicate Murray’s consciousness that Don Juan was Byron’s masterpiece. He wrote to the poet, ‘I have read it Six times and always discover some new excellence … you never did anything greater’ (LJM, 281). The asterisks, blank pages and the absence of his name are a reflection of the extent to which he was influenced by his advisers and Byron’s friends. Murray repeatedly pleaded with Byron to alter Don Juan. He conceded that Byron ‘need attempt nothing further for immortality’, but he persisted in asking Byron to change what he perceived to be offending sections (LJM, 280). Playing on Byron’s disappointment over the sale (three months after publication 12,000 out of 15,000 had been sold), Murray wrote that its sale would have been ‘universal if some 20 stanzas had been altered’ (LJM, 289). The fact that the book was not deemed suitable for ladies had ‘cut up’ his sale and he called it ‘cruel to cripple its circulation’; a ‘little wish to do right’ and he claimed he ‘could sell millions of them’ (LJM, 298, 281, 343). The publisher persisted with these tactics for months, writing of his dismay that ‘any thing should have appeared in the first part to restrain its circulation’ (LJM, 298). To Murray’s dismay, Byron would not relent. After chastising Murray as a ‘chicken-hearted – silver-paper Stationer’, he wrote ‘You are right – Gifford is right – Crabbe is right – Hobhouse is right – you are all right – and I am all wrong – but do pray let me have that pleasure’ (BLJ VI, 205–207). Murray wrote of his extreme ‘vexation’ that Byron’s refusal to alter sections of the poem prevented the sale from being ‘unbounded’, and claimed that he was not in any way ‘squeamish – but the character of the Middling Classes in the country – is certainly highly moral – and we should not offend them’ (LJM, 297). Byron had long been accustomed to Murray’s relaying of other people’s opinions; the explicit acknowledgement that those people were a fickle middle- to upper-class reading public that had deserted him once before hastened the breakup of their association. As Byron grew distant from Murray, he came to doubt that the publisher’s concern for him was genuine. This was because he became increasingly convinced that Murray’s opinions were not his own, but those of his ‘cursed puritanical committee’ (BLJ VI, 99). Byron often 182

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insisted that his publisher merely reported the beliefs of others; he wrote to Murray that he was ‘somewhat of the opinion of every body you talk with (particularly the last person you see)’ (BLJ IX, 54). In light of this disagreement between Byron and Murray regarding popularity, it is useful to consider the distinction Coleridge drew between fame and reputation. In distinguishing lasting fame from fleeting reputation, Coleridge uses the word ‘reputation’ in its ‘etymological sense, as the opinions of those who re-suppose the suppositions of others. Quod Hic putavit, ille reputat: re-echoes an echo’.20 It is difficult to think of a better way to describe Byron’s reception of Murray’s letters. The poet came to believe that the publisher’s letters were ultimately echoes of the Albemarle Street circle. Murray was certainly heavily influenced by Byron’s friends when it came to Don Juan; in addition, his solicitor Sharon Turner also advised suppression of the poem. Ian Jack argues that Murray’s advisers were ‘shrewd and sympathetic critics who were anxious that [Byron] should not completely antagonise the reading public of the time’.21 Peter Cochran calls them ‘a sad group of secondraters [who were] seriously out of sympathy with the direction which Byron’s poetical career was taking’.22 Cochran is arguably correct to accuse Murray of always agreeing ‘with the last person who spoke’; Byron would have supported this assertion, claiming that Murray was afraid ‘to have any opinion at all – till he knows what the Public think’ (BLJ VI, 131). Over the next few years, Murray hesitated in publishing the new cantos of Don Juan and Byron was exasperated by the conflict between Murray’s genuine enthusiasm for the poem and his insistence that it should be altered. The poet refused to submit to change it in order to make it more saleable; Murray’s usual tactic of appealing to Byron’s interest in the verdict of posterity did not work with Don Juan because the poem is, as Andrew Bennett describes it, one of ‘the most radical critiques of the culture of posterity from the Romantic period that we have’.23 The early cantos of Don Juan explicitly engage with the nature of Byron’s fame, a theme that had occupied him for most of his literary career. The conclusion to the first canto mocks the desire for popularity; Byron’s position on the subject is eloquently summarised in two stanzas that poignantly express the hollow nature of ambition: Ambition was my idol, which was broken   Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure; And the last two have left me many a token  O’er which reflection may be made at leisure:

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Now, like Friar Bacon’s brazen head, I’ve spoken,   “Time is, Time was, Time’s past:” – a chymic treasure In glittering youth, which I have spent betimes – My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes. What is the end of fame? ’tis but to fill  A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill,   Whose summit, like all hills’ is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,  And bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper’, To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. (DJ I.217, 218)

There can be no clearer illustration of the greatness of Don Juan than the realisation that in these two stanzas Byron has condensed years of reflection on ambition, fame and popularity. In commenting on the instability of writing, the precarious survival of names and the empty nature of pursuit, he arrives at a position where Murray’s protestations that he was endangering his fame would carry little weight. While the composition of the poem over the years was haphazard, these two stanzas signal Byron’s readiness to repudiate commercial considerations and even critical acclaim in order to write this poem, ‘though it were to destroy fame and profit at once’ (BLJ X, 126). Throughout 1820 Byron began to consider moving to other publishers. Often, this was a threat in response to the ‘continuing silence of … the “high minded Moray”’, but at other times he was serious (BLJ VII, 121). Writing to Kinnaird, he was careful to stress that he had no ‘personal coolness whatever’ with Murray, and ‘shall always be glad to hear of his doing well and to hear from him when he pleases’; to Hobhouse, he explained that ‘It is not because he declines that I disapprove – but because he hesitates and shuffles’ (BLJ VII, 120–121). In the face of repeated silence, stalling and neglect from his publisher, Byron’s letters are often remarkably reasonable. He explained to Murray that he had no fault with your opinions nor with you acting upon them – but I do protest against your keeping me four months in suspense – without any answer … if you don’t answer my letters I shall resort to the Row – where I shall not find probably good manner or liberality – but at least I shall have an answer of some kind. (BLJ VII, 124)

Byron advised Kinnaird that as to ‘shuffling’, ‘a publisher can hardly help it’, but he was not always so patient; in January 1821 he wrote to 184

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Murray ‘God help me – at this distance – I am treated like a corpse or a fool – by the few people whom I thought I could rely on’ (BLJ VII, 255; VIII, 66). A growing source of tension was the declining prices offered by Murray for the copyright to Byron’s works. Alongside Don Juan, Byron had turned to writing dramas, including Marino Faliero and Sardanapalus. Bemused by Murray’s lower offers, Byron wrote to Kinnaird that ‘I must either be fallen as a writer or he as a bookseller’ and compared the offers to those for the tales: ‘[Murray] offers a thousand pounds for the tragedy and for the prophecy!!! why he gave as many guineas for Larry – and Rogers’s Jacky – as much for the Siege of C[orinth] and for Parisina’ (BLJ VIII, 73). Byron’s correspondence with Kinnaird reveals the extent to which he became preoccupied with his finances after 1819. This was to the consternation of Kinnaird, who wrote to Byron that he could ‘not crave money with more avidity, were you one of Alcibiades his whores – you cannot eat it’.24 Although Kinnaird had been appointed to negotiate with Murray, Byron reminded Kinnaird that a negotiation with a publisher ‘is in its very essence a hostile transaction’. Showing an awareness of the nature of publishing, Byron wrote that Murray’s ‘business is nothing but a perpetual speculation on what will or will not succeed’ and that he had ‘no doubt that he would lend or give – freely – what he would refuse for value received in M.S.S.’ (BLJ VIII, 153). Although Kinnaird was intended to negotiate with Murray, Byron never stopped writing to the publisher himself, or defending him to his attorney. Byron’s good humoured attitude towards his publisher is evident in his letters even when he is annoyed with him: ‘you are grown quite a minister of State … You are an excellent fellow – mio Caro Moray – but there is still a little leaven of Fleet-Street about you now and then’ (BLJ VIII, 73–74). Regardless of how long it took Murray to respond to Byron’s letters, or how angry he became, as Leslie Marchand puts it, ‘as usual, it required only a friendly and enthusiastic letter from Murray to calm his suspicions’.25 Byron never stopped resenting Murray’s indolence, but his biographer is right to claim that he ‘could not be permanently angry with him’.26 Following weeks of silence, Murray had confessed to Byron that he thought ‘Canto III by no means equal to the two first’, and later pronounced it ‘dull [five times underlined]’ (LJM, 319, 367). Byron could not understand why Murray would rather keep him in suspense than communicate his true feelings, and the publisher admitted it was because feelings of friendship prevented him: 185

by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Hobhouse … with a kindness which makes me feel the more severely, has communicated your displeasure at my long & stupid silence upon the subject of the Poems. I assure you I am most sincerely grieved at this but I could not induce myself to write about any thing at once so delicate & disagreeable – & until I was assured of the concurrent opinion of Mr Hobhouse & Mr Kinnaird could I venture [sic] to state what had occurred to me – but this was I assure your Lordship the sole cause of my long silence and … was constituted of respect & friendship … (LJM, 325)

Byron complained to Hobhouse and Augusta about Murray’s neglect, and wrote to the publisher that ‘you are so grand and sublime & occupied that one would think instead of publishing for the “Board of Longitude” that you were trying to discover it’ (BLJ VIII, 198). Both publisher and poet recognised that Byron’s absence from London made matters difficult. Murray told Byron that he wished he would do him ‘the favour to return to London & come & talk all the day long – or send for me at night – as formerly’ (LJM, 373). Byron knew that Murray preferred to deal with his authors face to face and confided in Kinnaird that although the publisher was ‘as lazy and indolent as suits a parvenu; – if I were alongside of him – I could deal with him’ (BLJ VIII, 205–206). Varying between reacting wearily and furiously at Murray’s lack of communication, Byron made another effort to impress upon the publisher that he should deal with Kinnaird. In another witty parody of the publisher’s prevarication, Byron wrote: To him [Kinnaird] you can state all your mercantile reasons which you might not like to state to me personally – such as “heavy season” [“]flat public” “don’t go off” – [“]Lordship writes too much – Won’t take advice – declining popularity – deductions for the trade – make very little – generally lose by him – pirated edition – foreign edition – severe criticisms. &c.[”] with other hints and howls for an oration – which I leave Douglas who is an orator to answer. – – – You can also state them more freely – to a third person – as between you and me they could only produce some smart postscripts which would not adorn our mutual archives. (BLJ VIII, 187)

Here, Byron is trying to give Murray a way out of their business correspondence. A month later, he reinforced this by sending the publisher a list of six conditions for the future of their relationship. These conditions were that Murray should write of himself and his friends but not of Byron, that he should continue to send ‘Soda powders – tooth-paste – tooth brushes’, that he should send no new publications unless by a select group of his favourite writers, ‘no periodical works 186

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whatsoever’, ‘no opinions whatsoever either good – bad – or indifferent’ of Byron’s works ‘past – present – or to come’ and, finally, that all negotiations pass through Douglas Kinnaird, whom he instructed Murray to view as ‘tantamount to myself during my absence’ (BLJ VIII, 220). Throughout 1821 Byron had written Sardanapalus, Marino Faliero was published, he began The Two Foscari and Cain, and was becoming conscious that the direction his poetry was moving in did not suit Murray, particularly as they did not sell nearly as well as his previous works. Byron wrote to Kinnaird that he felt it was unfair to ‘burthen him with too many’ works, but that if he found a new publisher he would publish anonymously as he did not ‘wish to hurt M[urray]’s feelings in any way’ (BLJ VIII, 233). This attitude to his publisher shows that Byron probably believed Murray when he wrote My occasional apparent inattention arises from no causes but constitutional indolence – & now distaction [sic] from having so many correspondents – & such incessant interruption to my writing to them – but in essentials I trust you can never find me wanting. (LJM, 419)

Byron wrote to Murray in good humour, ‘you are a fine gentleman – and negligent as becomes a mighty man in his business … You shall be the hero of my next poem – will you publish it?’ (BLJ VIII, 248). Murray’s letters to Byron between 14 November 1821 and 16 April 1822 are missing, which is unfortunate as they cover the period prior to the publication of Cain. Murray published Byron’s biblical drama on 19 December 1821, in a volume which also contained Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari. Cain is one of Byron’s finest works. Byron thought of it as a drama ‘in the Manfred line’; he described how he had taken the story from Genesis, and dramatised it literally (BLJ VIII, 206). Hobhouse disapproved of it, and Murray was reluctant to publish it, but Walter Scott saw the drama for what it was, writing ‘I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground’ (CPW VI, 648). Byron had refused to allow Cain to be published separately, and immediately following publication it was denounced as blasphemous and pirated. Murray tried to obtain an injunction, but was refused by the Lord Chancellor. The outcry against Cain had serious implications for Murray, most notably the publication of a lengthy protest addressed directly to him. ‘A Remonstrance Addressed to Mr John Murray Respecting a Recent Publication’ was published in January 1822 and signed ‘OXONIENSIS’. The author claims that it would be futile to address Byron, so he addresses Murray, as the ‘agent of so much mischief’. He claims that as a 187

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bookseller, Murray is likely ‘to have but one standard of poetic excellent; – the extent of your sale’, but advised him that he should ‘answer … to the society which has thus aided your advance to wealth, and protects you in the possession of it’. Murray, the author claimed, had been deceived by Byron who ‘profited by the celebrity of his name to palm upon you obsolete trash’. It concluded ominously by reminding Murray that ‘You are responsible to that society whose institutions you contribute to destroy; and to those individuals whose dearest hopes you insult, and would annihilate’. The challenge was direct: ‘Mr Murray, I would bid you ask yourself, are you prepared to go all lengths with him?’27 Byron was horrified by this attack on Murray, and could not conceive how the publisher could possibly be considered responsible for something he did not write. He defended his poem against accusations of blasphemy, claiming that ‘If “Cain” be “blashphemous” – Paradise lost is blasphemous’, and offered to return to England to face the consequences of publication (BLJ IX, 103–104). After this incident, Byron advised Murray that it was in the latter’s best interests that he had decided to change publisher. By February 1822 Byron wrote to Moore that he was ‘but in little correspondence’ with Murray, but Murray persisted with the connection, writing Byron a letter that ‘melted’ the poet (BLJ IX, 110, 120). Although he was sure it was against Murray’s best interests, Byron asked Moore to send the manuscript of Werner to Albemarle Street, declaring ‘I cannot keep my resentments, though violent enough in their onset. Besides, now that all the world are at Murray on my account, I neither can nor ought to leave him’ (BLJ IX, 120). Following the reaction to Cain, Murray hesitated to publish Byron’s Heaven and Earth and The Vision of Judgement. Instead of refusing outright, Murray retained the manuscripts and kept Byron waiting for a decision. It was probably this tactic that prompted Byron to consider becoming involved in the publishing industry himself. In 1821 Shelley and Byron had discussed the possibility of collaborating on a periodical journal they would call The Liberal. They envisaged that the new work would involve the radical writer Leigh Hunt, and be published by Hunt’s brother John. Shelley and Byron proposed that the latter’s poetic satire on Robert Southey, The Vision of Judgement would be a published in the first issue. The manuscript had been in Murray’s hands for several months and Byron felt it would ‘relieve’ his publisher ‘from a dilemma’ (BLJ IX, 181). Byron wrote a note for John Hunt to bring to Albemarle Street, instructing Murray to surrender the manuscript of The Vision. The note explicitly directed Murray to deliver ‘the corrected copy of the 188

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proofs’ (BLJ IX, 179). The publisher’s reaction to this was predictable. As Nicholas Roe states, Byron’s actions represented ‘a huge shift of loyalties from the fashionable, establishment publisher Murray to the imprint of the convicted ‘cockney’ John Hunt’.28 Murray was horrified. William Hazlitt gleefully imagined the publisher’s response to the arrival of John Hunt, picturing the Albemarle Street circle ‘thrown into almost hysterical agonies of well bred horror at the coalition between their noble and ignoble acquaintance, between the patrician and the Newspaper-man’.29 Leslie Marchand speculates that it must have been ‘a bitter pill for Murray when he was suddenly confronted by John Hunt bearing Byron’s letter’.30 It was particularly galling to Murray, who had just returned from attending the funeral of Byron’s daughter Allegra, which he had organised.31 Murray lost no time in writing to Byron of his displeasure, and abused Hunt in the process: He delivered the letter in the most tipstave formal manner to me staring me, fully & closely in the face as if having administered a dose of Arsnick he wished to see its minute operations – & to all that I civilly & simply replied – with the same assassin look … if you knew the insulting behaviour … (LJM, 442)

Murray concluded the letter with a pointed reference to Byron’s more ‘gentlemanly friends’, drawing a clear distinction between the poet’s former and present associates. Byron showed this letter to Leigh Hunt, who was delighted at the misery of the Tory publisher. He wrote to his brother that: Poor Murray is indeed in a deplorable state, and one should pity him, as you are inclined to do, if he were not so profoundly servile … He writes to Lord B. how delighted he should be, if his Lordship would but be “so nobly generous” as to let him publish works of his “former glorious description” (admire the invincible impudence lurking at the bottom of this adulation); and he adds, in another letter, that he sits of a morning, for hours, looking at his Lordship’s picture! Imagine the languishing bookseller.32

Murray was indeed languishing, but he would soon have the satisfaction of receiving letters from Byron, who could not refrain from venting his growing frustrations with the Hunts and The Liberal. Byron never met John Hunt in person and his relationship with Leigh Hunt was strained. Shelley had been a crucial mediating presence between Byron and Leigh Hunt, and with Shelley’s death in 1822, their association became difficult. Byron admired Hunt’s principles and loyalty; he never 189

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forgot that Hunt ‘stuck by [him] through thick & thin – when all shook, and some shuffled in 1816’, but he was annoyed by Hunt’s lack of competence in matters of finance, and he was particularly irritated by his children, whom he described as ‘dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos’ (BLJ IX, 113; BLJ X, 11). Marchand writes that Byron disliked Hunt’s manner of address, which was a ‘curious mixture of democratic forwardness and sycophantic deference’.33 For his part, Hunt never quite knew how to deal with Byron. Nicholas Roe describes that what Hunt thought ‘he encountered in Byron was an aristocratic version of himself: independent-minded; personally and politically liberal; open, informal, unprejudiced about social class.’34 He had not expected to find a man who, as Shelley described him, had ‘many generous and exalted qualities’ but also suffered from ‘the canker of aristocracy’.35 There was also the fact that although he allied himself with John Hunt, Byron had not quite deserted John Murray. Byron’s reply to Murray’s letter about John Hunt began in exasperated fashion, reminding the publisher that he had ‘no wish to break off our connection’ but was left with little choice because Murray was ‘blown about with every wind’. He advised Murray that if John Hunt had indeed insulted him then he should have shown him ‘the door – or the window’. He went on to describe The Liberal as ‘a bad business’, called Leigh Hunt ‘a child’ in affairs of the world and complained about the way John Hunt had ‘hawked about’ Byron’s name to advertise the journal (BLJ X, 13). Of course, Murray made sure that several people saw this letter, which caused great embarrassment to the Hunts. Marchand attributes Byron’s indiscretion in this regard to the ‘habit of frankness’ he had developed with Murray and claimed the poet ‘could not but recognize that he had a closer understanding with Murray than with Hunt. He scolded Murray, but continued to write to him’.36 What happened next was the final straw for Byron, as it transpired that Murray had given John Hunt a copy of The Vision of Judgement without Byron’s corrections, and more seriously, without the preface, which made it clear that the object of Byron’s satire was Robert Southey and not the king. The text of the poem that was printed in the first number of The Liberal was inaccurate and left Byron and Hunt liable to prosecution. Byron was furious with Murray: ‘is this fair – is this honest? … If you have (as seems apparently to be the case) purposely kept back the preface to the Vision – I can only say that I know no words strong enough to express my sense of such conduct’ (BLJ X, 16). It is deeply ironic that although Byron had several valid reasons for breaking 190

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his connection with Murray (negligence in correspondence, hesitancy, retaining his manuscripts, etc.) in this instance, he was wrong to accuse the publisher of retaining the preface. The preface has never been found, and it is almost certain that it was either retained or lost not by Murray, but by Douglas Kinnaird. Without admitting his culpability, Kinnaird wrote repeatedly to assure Byron of his belief that Murray was innocent in this matter: ‘I do not believe that Mr Murray gave to Mr Hunt any wrong copy intentionally of the “Vision of Judgement” – This is my conviction’.37 Kinnaird claimed that Murray sent the manuscripts of the poem and the preface to Thomas Davison, and gave authority over them to Kinnaird himself because he was too ‘frightened at having a copy of either in his house’. The nearest Kinnaird came to exonerating Murray was his confession that ‘whether the fault of its not becoming lie with him or me I cannot determine’.38 Kinnaird’s letters carried no weight with Byron, who wrote to Murray to bid him ‘a final farewell’. He claimed that he had wished to remain on good terms, but Murray’s ‘recent & repeatedly rude neglect’ rendered it impossible (BLJ X, 28). Over the next few months, Byron’s letters resonated with paranoia as he came to believe that Murray was part of a massive conspiracy against him. He described Murray as a ‘bookselling Leviathan’, talked of the ‘cursed scheme of Murray and his gang’, and was certain that Murray, who was ‘powerful in his way and in his wrath has done and will do all that he can to perplex or impede’ (BLJ X, 146, 145, 116). The conspiracy, Byron felt, was ‘Murray’s well known endeavour to destroy every publication of mine – which don’t [sic] pass through his own medium’, and the publisher was aided by the fact that he had ‘the Clergy, and the Government, and the Public with him’ (BLJ X, 135, 123). He also confided to Kinnaird his suspicion that the printer Thomas Davison acted as a spy for Murray (BLJ X, 98). The breakdown of Byron’s connection to John Murray was played out in public as the newspapers followed what was for a while Byron’s association with two publishers: ‘the mighty publisher of Albemarle Street’ on one side, and John Hunt on the other. It was seen as unthinkable that Byron should descent to ‘be printed by the Cockneys, and puffed in the Examiner … that he should stoop to the miserable degradation of being extolled by Hunt!’ (RR, B: I, 205). When Byron transferred the publication of the later cantos of Don Juan to Hunt, reviewers were quick to seize on the difference: [i]nstead of being printed by MISTER DAVISON, of Blackfriars, on the finest wove paper, in the most beautiful type, and ushered into decent society

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay through the agency of MR JOHN MURRAY, at the rate of one pound five shillings, as the first portion of the book was, this detachment of trash is sent into the world through the medium of the printer, we believe, of the EXAMINER newspaper and sold at its real value of one shilling. (RR, B: III, 1220)

Byron’s friends were not pleased with the connection, and Kinnaird was slow to release the manuscripts to John Hunt. This was particularly hard on Hunt, who felt he was in the no-win situation position of competing with one of the most powerful publishers in London. Hunt wrote of Kinnaird’s hesitancy to Byron, and suggested that Byron find someone else to publish his works: I must, however state, that he is of opinion that your Lordship’s productions had better pass to the public through other hands than mine. This is a subject upon which I can say little: an interested man hardly takes the proper view of a question: – but this much I must add, that your Lordship’s friend being of this opinion, I am placed in rather a difficult situation – for should any piece published by me not have the expected or deserved success in point of sale, that want will in part be attributed to the publisher. Your Lordship will have the goodness to consider this, and, should you unite in judgement with Mr Kinnaird, allow me to suggest, that it would be more satisfactory even to me that Mr Kinnaird should employ a person more favourably circumstanced than myself.39

Byron knew that his works would not be as popular as they once were, and assured John Hunt that he was satisfied with him as his new publisher. Byron’s correspondence with Hunt shows him to have agreed with Kinnaird’s assessment of the publisher, that he was ‘an upright honest & honourable man’.40 Murray’s last letters to Byron are uncharacteristically straightforward as he sought to clear himself of Byron’s suspicions regarding his conduct. On 29 October 1822 he wrote of ‘the universal disappointment and condemnation which has followed the publication of the “Liberal”’. Murray finally stopped shuffling with Byron and told him exactly what he thought of the new cantos of Don Juan: I declare to you, these were so outrageously shocking that I would not publish them if you would give me your estate – Title – & Genius – For heavens [sic] sake revise them, they are equal in talent to any thing you have written … My Company used to be courted for the pleasure of talking about you – it is totally the reverse now – &, by a re-action, even your former works are considerably deteriorated in Sale – It is impossible for you to have

192

‘a bo ok w i t hou t a bo ok se l l e r’

Fig. 8 John Murray to Byron, 29 October 1822. JMA, MS. 43497.

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay a more purely attached friend than I am, my name is connected with your fame – and I beseech you to take care of it – (LJM, 456)

Byron was gratified that Murray admitted his fears about Don Juan, and that ‘the truth comes out at length’, but it was too late to salvage their association (BLJ X, 35). As The Literary Register reported, ‘Lord Byron and John Murray – the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Publishers – have long been on very indifferent terms, and now, it appears, the divorce is utterly consummated!’ (RR, B: IV, 1539). Notes 1 Review of Don Juan in British Critic (Aug., 1819) RR, B: I, 296. 2 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 506–507. 3 Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History, p. 94. 4 McGann, Don Juan in Context (London: John Murray, 1976) p. 65. 5 Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, p. 254. 6 See John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, 5 January 1819, Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, pp. 256–260. 7 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 29 December 1818. JMA, MS. 42455. 8 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, Friday 8 January 1819. 9 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, Monday 27 December 1818. 10 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 7 September 1822. JMA, MS. 43456. 11 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 26 June 1821. JMA, MS. 43455. 12 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 14 May 1821. JMA, MS. 43455. 13 The Morning Post, Monday 19 July 1819. 14 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 215. 15 Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, p. 275. 16 Ibid., p.  275 17 St Clair, Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 323. 18 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 28 December 1819. JMA, MS. 43455. 19 Louis J. Jennings, ed., The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809–1830, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1855) vol. 1, pp. 145–146. 20 Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 3, pp. 277–278. 21 Jack, A Poet and his Audience, p. 75. 22 Cochran, ‘Byron and the Politics of Editing’, p. 52. 23 Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity, p. 194. 24 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 19 March 1819. JMA, MS. 43455. 25 Marchand, Byron, vol. II, p. 864. 26 Ibid., p.  929. 27 Oxoniensis, ‘A Remonstrance Addressed to Mr John Murray Respecting a Recent Publication’ (London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1822). 28 Nicholas Roe, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt (London: Pimlico, 2005) p. 334. 29 Hazlitt, Selected Writings, vol. 8, p. 351.

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‘a bo ok w i t hou t a bo ok se l l e r’ 30 Leslie Marchand, ‘John Hunt as Byron’s Publisher’, Keats-Shelley Journal, 8 (1959) p. 334. 31 Byron’s daughter Allegra, born after a short affair with Claire Clairmont, died on 20 April 1822, aged 5. For a full account of circumstances surrounding her funeral, see LJM 444–446. 32 Letter from Leigh Hunt to John Hunt, 26 October 1822. William Hone, My Leigh Hunt Library: The Holograph Letters, ed. Luther A. Brewer (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1938) p. 155. 33 Marchand, ‘John Hunt as Byron’s Publisher’, p. 120. 34 Roe, Fiery Heart, p. 224. 35 The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 2, p. 660. 36 Marchand, Byron, vol. III, p. 1041. 37 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 15 November 1822. JMA, MS. 43456. 38 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 15 and 26 November 1822. JMA, MS. 43456. 39 Letter from John Hunt to Byron, 21 March 1823. JMA, MS. 43450. 40 Letter from Kinnaird to Byron, 3 January 1823. JMA, MS. 43456.

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Conclusion conclusion The relationship between Byron and John Murray began with Childe Harold and it ended with Don Juan. In publishing Childe Harold in a beautiful quarto edition, Murray made Byron famous. In publishing Don Juan in the same expensive and luxurious format, Murray helped to ensure the uproar which followed and to hasten the end of his association with Byron. Samuel Chew describes the poem appearing ‘shame-facedly before the British public, a burly bastard in large quarto’.1 That Murray ‘chose to clothe his unacknowledged offspring in large quarto sheets’ is of great significance.2 The poem was unacknowledged because Murray refused to put his name on the title page of the book. Childe Harold had been triumphantly presented as the acknowledged product of a union between Byron and Albemarle Street; with Don Juan Murray, whether consciously or not, distanced himself and his firm from his most famous author. In William Hone’s parody of Don Juan, Murray appears as ‘Drab John’, who had become timid and ashamed of Byron: John owes me much and need’ nt have been ashamed  To put his name upon the title page, Although he deemed my muse a little lamed,  And fitter to be warbling from a cage; I’d have him know she is not yet so tamed,  Although she scorns to shew it by a rage, As crouch to any one so ministerial: Was it not I that lent him wings ethereal?3

Murray deliberately marketed Byron towards a particular type of reader: the first condition of belonging to Murray’s readership was that one could afford the expensive editions. This was an effective tactic. As Jerome Christensen reminds us, ‘keeping the price of the volumes high was a way not only of appealing to an elite clientele but of determining a clientele’.4 Byron twice suggested that Murray should publish Don Juan in cheaper editions, but to no avail (BLJ IX, 136). The materiality 196

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of Murray’s books largely prohibited a wide readership for Byron and fostered an air of exclusivity. We have already seen the extent to which Murray felt as if he ‘owned’ Byron; the publisher constantly reminded the poet that their names and fates were entwined. In what was probably the greatest irony of their literary association, by publishing Don Juan in the way he did Murray helped to make sure that the poem ‘was read by more people in its first twenty years than any previous work of English literature’.5 His hesitancy in publishing the poem in the first place, combined with his failure to put his name on the title page, made it clear that Murray feared prosecution; the manner in which Don Juan was published was, in essence, ‘an open invitation to piracy’.6 In the poem Byron imagined a readership of ‘thousands, perhaps millions’ (DJ III.88); his wish was granted as over 100,000 copies of different editions of the poem were produced during his lifetime. William St Clair estimates that the figures suggest a readership of at least a million, if not a million and a half.7 The reason these figures are so high is not just because of John Hunt’s later affordable editions, but because the poem was pirated immediately and repeatedly following its official publication. Murray’s efforts to halt this flood of publications were futile. The manner of publication has also been credited with reigniting the fear of Byron as a poet capable of contaminating the morals of society. The Quarterly Review reminded Murray that Don Juan would not have multiplied so quickly if he had ensured it was the subject of copyright. It would have been ‘confined by its price to a class of readers’ who would have been immune to its pernicious influence: ‘Don Juan’ in quarto and on hot-pressed paper would have been almost innocent – in a whity-brown duodecimo it was one of the worst of the mischievous publications that have made the press a snare.8

The circumstances and effect of publication were, in every way, the reverse of the early cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It is not just in terms of materiality or Murray’s reaction to them that Childe Harold and Don Juan can be considered as inverted mirrors of each other. In October 1820 Byron wrote to Murray describing an encounter with ‘a very pretty Italian lady’ who had recently read Don Juan: She read it in the French, and paid me some compliments with due drawbacks upon it; – I answered that “what she said was true – but that I suspected that it would live longer than Childe Harold.” – “Ah (but said she) I would

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an Immortality of Don Juan”! (BLJ VII, 202)

If the poems are emblematic of the beginning and end of Byron and Murray’s relationship, for Byron they are also emblematic of the distinction between popularity and lasting fame. It is testament to the powerful influence of Albemarle Street on Byron’s mind that he seriously considered discontinuing Don Juan due to lack of encouragement (BLJ VI, 167). He was hurt by the reaction of Murray and his advisors and, not used to such a ‘lukewarm publisher’, found it difficult to even copy out his cantos (BLJ IX, 55). The reason Byron persisted with what he knew to be his greatest poem was precisely the reason he told the ‘pretty Italian lady’ – he knew it would ‘live longer’. Hazlitt’s distinction between popularity and immortality is partly based on the motivation of the author. He contended that: [v]anity, and the love of fame, are quite distinct from each other; for the one is voracious of the most obvious and doubtful applause, whereas the other rejects or overlooks every kind of applause but that which is purified from every mixture of flattery.9

Although Murray did like Don Juan (he was in favour of an ending where Juan would end in hell and ‘favour us with the characters whom he finds there’), his applause was ‘doubtful’ because of the moral tendency of the poem (LJM, 388). Ultimately, it was the hypocrisy of the circle of readers in Albemarle Street that made it impossible for Byron to continue his association with Murray. Don Juan is Byron’s best exploration of the materiality of the text and the potential for immortal fame: But words are things, and a small drop of ink,   Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;   ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link  Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper – even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his! (DJ III.88)

All of Byron’s concerns about the materiality of the text, reputation, popularity and fame are present in this stanza. In the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Byron had imagined that ‘there may be / Words which are things’ (III.114); in his masterpiece he knows that words are things and gives us a vivid image of a drop of ink crystallising 198

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his thoughts on paper and acting as a link between ages. After a career characterised by anxiety regarding his posthumous fame, Byron realised that Don Juan would survive and be read by ‘thousands, perhaps millions’ whether it was printed on ‘a rag like this’ or as one of Murray’s expensive quartos. John Gibson Lockhart shared Byron’s conviction that Don Juan would grant him immortal fame. In an anonymous open letter to the poet he urged him to ‘Stick to Don Juan: it is the only sincere thing you have ever written; and it will live many years after all your humbug Harolds have ceased to be’.10 Lockhart went on to expose the timidity and insincerity of Murray and his advisors: Don Juan is out of all sight the best of your works; it is by far the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, and the most poetical; and everybody thinks of it as I do of it, although they have not the heart to say so. Old Gifford’s brow relaxed as he gloated over it; Mr. Croker chuckled … The whole band of the Quarterly were delighted.11

Lockhart concluded by promising Byron that the poem ‘sells, and will sell to the end of time, whether our good friend Mr. John Murray honours it with his imprimatur or doth not so honour it’.12 The side-lining of Murray from a position of real importance in Byron’s life and career is largely due to his friends distaste for the fact that the latter had a close literary and sometimes personal relationship with his publisher. For many contemporaries, Murray represented the side of Byron that was concerned with trade, commerce, profit and high sales. This is perhaps best exemplified by Thomas Moore’s attitude towards Murray. Moore admitted that he often ‘treated [Murray] like a tradesman’ and he often made derogatory references to the publisher.13 After Murray showed Moore a letter from Byron where the poet described one of his Venetian ‘intrigues’, Moore was appalled that Byron should write such letters to ‘him … the bookseller – a person so out of his caste’.14 Byron’s friends frequently expressed their distaste that Murray shared Byron’s letters with the visitors to his Albemarle Street drawing room, but Byron knew that this is what Murray would do. Hobhouse let Byron know on several occasions that ‘Murray reads his confidential letters to the promiscuous frequenters of his reading room. Still he writes on, and tells first what comes uppermost to this town crier of his epistles’.15 Hobhouse knew, however, that his ‘friend Byron has a most extraordinary anxiety that every, even the minutest traits, of his conduct, and all the accidents of his life, as well as the train of his thoughts, should be in some shape or other before the world’.16 Moore 199

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agreed with this assessment of Byron’s character, and saw how it was facilitated: To keep the minds of the English public for ever occupied about him … was, day and night, the constant ambition of his soul; and in the correspondence he so regularly maintained with his publisher, one of the chief mediums through which this object was to be effected lay. Mr Murray’s house being then, as now, the resort of most of those literary men who are, at the same time, men of the world, his Lordship knew that whatever particulars he might wish to make public concerning himself, would, if transmitted to that quarter, be sure to circulate from thence throughout society.17

After Byron’s death, Moore and Hobhouse refused to allow Murray’s name on a committee to organise a monument for the poet. The reasoning for this was because Murray ‘is, after all, but a tradesman, he has hardly a right to be there’.18 The circumstances surrounding the destruction of Byron’s memoirs have been described at great length, and for the purposes of this book it is sufficient to highlight the fact that Murray was determined that they should never see the light of day.19 Murray was deeply affected by Byron’s death, and although he legally owned the manuscript, he wanted to surrender it to Byron’s family, not caring whether he received the money he had advanced to Moore or not. Hobhouse recorded that he did Murray ‘the injustice to think he might prove the obstacle’ to the destruction of the memoirs, but this was not the case.20 At one stage of the negotiations Murray even threatened to burn the memoirs himself: ‘I do not care whose the MSS are – here I am as a tradesman – I do not care a farthing about having your money, or whether I get it or not – but such regard have I for Lord Byron’s honour and fame that I am willing and determined to destroy the MSS’.21 The notebook in which Byron wrote his memoirs survives in Albemarle Street to this day. It is a green notebook measuring 18 x 32cm, from which about half the pages have been torn out. On 17 May 1824, those pages were burned in the fireplace of John Murray’s drawing room in Albemarle Street. Murray always maintained that he never read the memoirs. Considering the delight with which he received all news of Byron and his life abroad, I find it hard to believe this was the case. Humphrey Carpenter presents a variety of theories as to why Murray, as a publisher, denied himself what would surely have been a publishing sensation and a considerable profit. The fear of losing the publication to Longmans seems highly credible, but Murray gave us the reason himself: 200

c onclusion I looked at the case with no such feelings and that my regard for Lord Byrons [sic] memory and my respect for his surviving Family made me most anxious that the Memoirs should be immediately destroyed since it was surmised that the publication might be injurious to the former and painful to the latter.22

We will never understand why Murray consented to have the memoirs burned if we consider him solely as Byron’s publisher. He was well acquainted with Byron’s family (Augusta wrote of her great unhappiness at the way Byron treated Murray towards the end of their association) and he felt it was his duty to protect Byron’s reputation, even after the poet had died.23 Of course, Murray commissioned Thomas Moore to write the official biography of the poet, so he did make back in profit what he had denied himself in burning the memoirs. I believe that Murray and Byron’s association lasted as long as it did because, despite the difference in class, they had fundamentally compatible personalities. Murray knew how to deal with Byron, and Byron enjoyed his publisher’s flattering, gossipy letters. Byron made enough expressions of his regard for Murray to prove his attachment beyond any doubt. There is also the fact that he kept publishing with Murray even when, as Murray himself conceded, ‘any other man would have done with his publisher forever’ (LJM, 344). Murray has been accused repeatedly of agreeing with the last person who spoke, but Byron shared the same tendency. Leigh Hunt wrote that Byron himself said what convinced him in an argument was ‘the last speaker’, and Shelley maintained that ‘Byron is always influenced by his last acquaintance’.24 It is no surprise that their relationship broke down when communication between them was reliant on an unpredictable postal service. Did Byron consider Murray his friend? Byron wrote to Mary Shelley about the nature of friendship and claimed that ‘it is a propensity in which [his] genius is very limited’: I do not know the male human being, except Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel any thing that deserves the name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships. I did not even feel it for Shelley, however much I admired and esteemed him … I will do my duty by my intimates … I may be pleased with their conversation – rejoice in their success – be glad to do them service, or to receive their counsel and assistance in return … I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one’s partners in the waltz of this world – not much remembered when the ball is over, though very pleasant for the time. (BLJ X, 34)

By these criteria, Murray was certainly one of Byron’s ‘men-of-the world’ friends. The letters Byron wrote to Murray are the best source we have 201

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for the poet’s thoughts on his writing and his fame. Despite the fact that he was notoriously gossipy, a remarkable amount of people saw Murray as a confidant. Byron was no different. One of his most moving letters from Italy is addressed to his publisher and is written for no other reason than that Byron is missing his daughter: This day and hour (one on the Clock) my daughter is six years old. I wonder when I shall see her again or if ever I shall see her at all … Send me my daughter Ada’s miniature. – I have only the print … I heard the other day from an English voyager – that her temper is said to be extremely violent. – Is it so? – It is not unlikely considering her parentage. (BLJ IX, 77)

The relationship between Byron and Murray saw an association between one of the most famous poets of the time, and one of the most powerful publishers. Murray’s association with Byron has obscured all his other achievements, The Quarterly Review and publishing Jane Austen amongst them. It was his fate to be remembered as he was described in the first line of his obituary in The Athenaeum, ‘Mr John Murray – the John Murray of Lord Byron’.25 He would have been pleased. Notes 1 Samuel Chew, Byron in England: His Fame and After-Fame (London: J. Murray, 1924) p. 28. 2 Hugh Luke Jr., ‘The Publishing of Byron’s Don Juan’, PMLA, vol. 80, no. 3 (Jun., 1965) p. 200. 3 See William Hone, Don Juan, Canto the Third (London: 1819). 4 Christensen, Lord Byron’s Strength, p. 144. 5 St Clair, Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 333. 6 Hugh Luke Jr., ‘The Publishing of Byron’s Don Juan’, p. 201. 7 St Clair, Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 333. 8 The Quarterly Review, April 1822. Cited in Hugh Luke Jr., ‘The Publishing of Byron’s Don Juan’, p. 202. 9 Hazlitt, vol. 2, p. 95. 10 John Gibson Lockhart, Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Byron by John Bull, April/May 1821 in Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage, p. 183. 11 Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage, pp. 183–184. 12 Ibid., p. 187. 13 Thomas Moore, The Journal of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden, 6 vols (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983) vol. 3, p. 935. 14 Moore, Journal, vol. 1, p. 187. 15 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, 28 October 1820. 16 Diary of John Cam Hobhouse, 28 October 1820. 17 Moore, Life, vol. 1, p. 3. 18 Moore, Journal, vol. 3, p. 939.

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c onclusion 19 For an excellent account of the destruction of the memoirs, see Carpenter, Seven Lives of John Murray, pp. 128–148. 20 Ibid., p.  133. 21 Ibid., p. 138. 22 Ibid., p.  144. 23 Letter from Augusta Leigh to John Murray, 20 December (?) 1823, ‘I am so unhappy on the subject of my Brother’s conduct towards you’. JMA, MS. 43482. 24 Marchand, Byron, III, p. 963. 25 The Athenaeum, 1 July 1843.

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Index index Adams, James Eli 20n Almon, John 23, 42n Anti-Jacobin, The 39 Athenaeum, The 202, 203n Austen, Jane 31, 127, 141n, 172, 175n, 202 Emma 172 Barrow, John 104 Bate, Jonathan 10, 25n Beatty, Bernard 55, 64n, 173n Beaty, Frederick 53, 64n Becher, Rev. John Thomas 46–47, 49 Beckford, William 79, 93, 112, 115 Vathek 112, 115 Belanger, Terry 20n Bennett, Andrew 100n, 145, 173, 183, 194n Blackwood, William 9 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 150, 174n Blake, William 27, 42n Blessington, Lady 89 Boswell, James 21n Bonaparte, Napoleon 127, 130, 134, 140n, 148–150 Brougham, Henry 34–35, 48, 50–53, 60 Burns, Robert 135 Burney, Dr William 28–29 Butler, Marilyn 35, 44n Byron, Augusta (Augusta Leigh) 15, 63, 102, 142n, 143–145, 149, 151, 159, 186, 201, 203n

Byron, George Gordon Lord (Works) Beppo 80, 97, 101, 162–164, 177, 182 Bride of Abydos, The 45, 101, 120–121, 123, 130–132 Cain 187–188 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto I–II 3, 9, 16, 17, 53, 62, 65–71, 74–81, 84–96, 99n, 102–103, 106, 109, 112–115, 118, 121, 127–129, 131, 141n, 196–198 Canto III 13, 145–159, 161–162, 173n Canto IV 163, 170, 174n Corsair, The 1, 101, 116, 121, 123, 126–131, 133, 140n, 141n, 154, 161 Curse of Minerva, The 65 Don Juan 19–20, 45, 48, 56, 75, 82n, 146, 173, 177–185, 191–192, 194, 196–199 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 17, 35, 46, 52–53, 55–56, 60–62, 64–66, 68–71, 76–77, 81–82, 83n, 85, 89, 92, 98, 131, 163, 176–177. ‘Epistle to Augusta’ 149 Fugitive Pieces 45, 47, 49, 63n Giaour, The 17, 53, 101, 110–111, 113–121, 129, 131–132, 141n, 152, 161 Heaven and Earth 188

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Hebrew Melodies 134–137 Hours of Idleness 46, 48–50, 52–54, 60, 63, 66, 89 Lament of Tasso, The 161 Lara 1, 101, 132–133 ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’ 11, 126–127 Manfred 45, 152, 159–162, 164, 175n, 187 Marino Faliero, or The Doge of Venice 101, 185, 187 Parisina 101, 137–138, 185 Poems on Various Occasions 47 Prisoner of Chillon, The 156–158, 161 Siege of Corinth, The 101, 137–138 185 Two Foscari, The 187 Vision of Judgement, The 188, 190–191 Werner 188 Campbell, Thomas 7, 98, 104, 163–164 Campbell, Richard 23–24, 42n London Tradesman, The 23, 42n Canning, George 32, 36 Canning, Stratford 32, 36, 104 Cawthorn, James 53, 61–62, 65–71, 77–78, 82n, 85 Champion, The 129, 138 Chew, Samuel 196, 202n Chilcott, Tim 20n Christensen, Jerome 11, 13, 21n, 22n, 48, 51, 63n, 64n, 94, 99n, 116, 128, 138, 141n, 146, 148, 173n, 180, 194n, 196, 202n Churchill, Charles 54–55, 145–146 Clairmont, Claire 153–154, 174n, 195n Clare, John 15 Clare, Lord 201 Clarke, Edward 114 Clearman, Mary 64n

Cochran, Peter 11, 17, 21n, 22n, 49, 63n, 83n, 131, 142n, 174n, 183, 194n Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 54, 61, 75, 107, 138, 150, 174n, 183, 194n Christabel 107 Kubla Khan 107 Colman, George 30–31, 43n Constable, Archibald 12–13, 23, 33–34, 38, 43n, 85, 102 Constable, Thomas 43n, 99n Cooke, Robert 29 Cottle, Amos 54, 58 Courier, The 126–127, 131, 136, 141n Court Miscellany 23 Cowper, William 2, 9 Critical Review, The 26, 50, 60, 129, 138, 173n Croker, John Wilson 12, 104, 154, 161, 164, 181, 194n, 199 Croker, Thomas Crofton 142n Crook, Nora 153, 174n Crosby, Ben 45, 49–50 Curll, Edmund 8 Curran, Stuart 119, 141n Curwen, Henry 20n, 44n Cutmore, Jonathan 11, 21n, 22n, 34, 37, 40, 43n, 44n Dallas, Charles 121 Dallas, Robert Charles 17, 53, 66–71, 76–80, 82n, 83n, 89, 121–123, 131, 141n Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron 66, 82n Davies, Scrope 153, 174n, 177–178 Davison, Thomas 78–79, 181, 191 Davy, Humphrey 102 Devonshire, Duchess of 87 d’Herbelot, Barthelmi 115 Bibliothèque Orientale 115 D’Israeli, Isaac 8, 21n, 32, 83n, 99n Dodsley, Robert 8, 15 Douglass, Paul 140n Dryden, John 2, 20n, 53, 55

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i n de x Eagles, John 107 The Journal of Llewellin Penrose, a Seaman 107 Eclectic Review, The 51, 96, 181 Edgeworth, Maria 9 Edinburgh Review, The 33, 34–38, 40–41, 48, 50–52, 56, 59, 68, 82, 90 Edleston, John 80 Elfenbein, Andrew 14, 22n Elgin, Lord 69, 79, 95 Elledge, Paul 80, 83n Elliot, Charles 33 Ellis, David 10, 21n Ellis, George 36, 90, 95–96, 115, 130 English Review, The 26 Erickson, Lee 22n Espinasse, Franz 22n

Grant, James 139n, 157 Gray, Thomas 46–47, 146 Elegy in a Country Church Yard 46–47, 146

Franklin, Caroline 10, 21n, 54, 64n, 163, 175n Frere, John Hookham 1, 104, 157, 161, 164, 177–178 Fuess, Claude 53, 64n Galland, Antoine 112 Arabian Nights Entertainment 112 Gentleman’s Magazine, The 60 Gifford, William 1, 36–37, 39–41, 44n, 53–56, 71, 74–77, 89, 98, 104, 107, 115, 120, 123, 134, 153–157, 160–162, 170, 176, 182, 199 Baviad, The 39, 44n, 66, 177 Maeviad, The 39, 66 Gill, Stephen 22n Gillray, James 27 Gleckner, Robert 113 Godwin, William 26, 42n, 136–138 Goethe 159, 175n Faust 159 Goldsmith, Oliver 7–8, 13n, 112 Gordon, Sir Robert 24 Graham, Maria 145 Graham, Peter 13, 62, 77, 107

Hanson, Hargreaves 80 Harper’s Monthly Magazine 15, 22n Hazlitt, William 13, 22n, 34, 40, 43n, 74–75, 117, 141n, 154, 174n, 189, 198 Henley, Samuel 115 Highley, Samuel 29–31, 33, 43n, 68, 82n Hobhouse, John Cam 1, 15, 19–20, 22n, 62, 65, 67, 70, 82, 105, 110, 113, 135–136, 140n, 142n, 143, 150–152, 157–158, 170, 172–175, 177–178, 180, 182, 184, 186–187, 194n, 199–200, 202n Hodgson, Francis 9, 70, 78, 104 Hogg, James 157 Holland, Lord 61, 81–82, 86–87, 121 Holloway, Thomas 27 Holmes, Richard 154, 174n Honan, Park 141n Hone, William 195n, 196, 202n Horner, Francis 34 Hunt, James Henry Leigh 11, 19, 37, 40, 107, 188–190, 194n, 195n, 201 Story of Rimini, The 107 Hunt, John 10, 12, 20, 188–192, 195, 197 Hunter, Charles 33 Hunter, Henry 27 Hunter, J. Paul 64n Jack, Ian 83n, 89, 99n, 172, 175n, 183, 194n Jeffrey, Francis 34–35, 38, 40, 47, 52, 57, 59, 89, 114 Jenner, Edward 31 An Inquiry into the Variolae Vaccinae 31 Jennings, Louis J. 194n

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Johnson, Joseph 8–9, 12, 15, 25, 27 Johnson, Samuel 1, 8, 15, 21n, 57, 112, 148 Rasselas 112 The Vanity of Human Wishes 173n Jones, Sir William 112, 140n Essay on the Poetry of the Eastern Nations 112 Jones, Steven E. 54 Jump, John 99n Juvenal 40, 53–55, 64n, 173n Keats, John 20n, 52, 104, 139n Kinglake, Robert 31, 43n Kinnaird, Douglas 15, 19, 133, 135–137, 142n, 156, 158, 178–179, 181, 184–187, 191–192, 194n, 195n Knight, Charles 20n, 21n, 23, 42n Lamb, Charles 7, 21n, 105 Lamb, Lady Caroline 15, 102, 108–110, 140n, 142n, 144–145, 151 Lavater, Johann Kaspar 27 Essays on Physiognomy 27 Leask, Nigel 112–113, 140n Lesser, Zachary 6, 20n Letter to John Murray Esqre. 177 Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, The 10, 21n Lewis, Matthew 159 Liberal, The 188–190, 192 Lockhart, John Gibson 99, 199, 202n Longman, Thomas (Longmans Publishers) 33, 43n, 53, 69, 87, 155, 171, 200 Lowell Jr, Ernest 173n Luke Jr, Hugh 202n Lyttleton, Lord 45–46, 63n Dialogues of the Dead 25 MacCarthy, Fiona 83n, 99n, 107, 140n Mackintosh, Sir James 104, 137

Manning, Peter 54, 59, 64n, 88, 99n, 118, 127–128, 138, 141n, 142n Marchand, Leslie 12, 22n, 49, 63n, 65–66, 82n, 111, 132, 140n, 142n Marshall, William H. 54, 64n, 140n Maruca, Lisa 8, 18n Martin, Philip 99n, 141n Mason, Nicholas 84–85, 98n, 99n Matthews, Charles Skinner 80 McCleery, Alistair 6, 20 McGann, Jerome 48, 50, 53, 55, 63n, 79–80, 83n, 86, 96, 99n, 100n, 101, 113–114, 137, 139, 140n, 147, 149, 173n, 174n, 194n McMurray, Robert 23 Medwin, Thomas 141n Melbourne, Lady 109, 127 Merivale, John Herman 1 Merry, Robert 39 Meyer, Henry 109 Milbanke, Annabella (Lady Byron) 102, 111, 126, 143–145, 151, 177 Miller, William 57, 67–70, 82n, 102–103, 131 Miniature, The 32 Mole, Tom 11, 21n, 79–80, 83n, 134, 136, 142n, 147, 173n Montgomery, Robert 13 Monthly Literary Recreations 50, 63n Monthly Review, The 26 Moore, Thomas 15, 21n, 47, 53, 59, 63n, 64n, 81, 83n, 84–85, 89, 97–98, 98n, 99n, 105n, 112, 115, 121, 123, 126–127, 130, 135–136, 139n, 140n, 141n, 144, 156–157, 163, 170, 173n, 188, 199 -201, 202n Lallah Rookh 115, 123 Morning Chronicle, The 126, 180 Morning Post, The 126, 131, 194n

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i n de x Murray, Anne (Elliot) 36, 38, 43n, 44n, 103, 108, 110, 140n Murray, Archy 25, 28–29, 42n, 43n, 104, 139n Murray, Christina 60n, 103, 139n. Murray, Hester 60n, 103 Murray, John I (John McMurray) 23–29 History of Sir Launcelot Edgevile, The, 23 Murray, John II 1–4, 6–20, 25–41, 45, 49, 52, 56–57, 60–63, 66–72, 74–82, 84–89, 91, 96–98, 101–112, 114–116, 118–124, 126–139, 143–145, 150–165, 170–173, 176–194, 196–202. Murray, John III 38, 42n, 103 Murray, John VI 84

Rawes, Alan 80, 83n Ridge, John 47, 49–50 Ridgeway, James 10, 21n Robinson, Henry Crabbe 69, 82n Roe, Nicholas 189–190 Rogers, Samuel 88, 98, 105, 114, 120, 133, 137, 139n, 157 Jacqueline 133, 185 Voyage of Columbus 114 Romanelli, Dr 65 Ross, James 25 Ross, Jean 23 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 148 Rundell, Maria 3, 34, 43n, 99n New System of Domestic Cookery, A 3, 13, 34, 43n, 103 Rutherford, Andrew 160 Rutherford, Rev. William 28

Nathan, Isaac 133–136, 142n Newey, Vincent 148, 173n Newlyn, Lucy 16, 22n Nicholson, Andrew 2, 10, 15, 22n, 67–68, 122, 151 Nietzche, Friedrich 159, 175n Noel, Sir Ralph 144

Sanders, George 109 Sandby, William 24 Sardanapalus 185, 187 Satirist, The 119 Scott, Sir Walter 7, 12–13, 24, 33, 35–37, 39–41, 57, 81–82, 87, 98, 99n, 102, 104, 112, 119–120, 135, 143, 157, 173, 187 Marmion 33, 36, 103, 119 Rokeby 119 Seward, Anna 87 Sharp, Richard 120 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 140n, 153, 155, 201 Frankenstein 155 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 75, 147, 153–156, 160, 189, 190, 201 Alastor 155 Julian and Maddalo 153 Laon and Cythna 155 Zastrozzi 155 Slater, Joseph 142n Smiles, Samuel 9–10, 24, 29–30, 33, 41, 43n, 103 A Publisher and His Friends 9

O’Connell, Emma 19 O’Connell, Mary 20 Pigot, Elizabeth 49, 53 Polidori, John 164 Pope, Alexander 3, 39, 53, 55–58, 60, 63, 64n, 65, 70, 92, 154, 177 Dunciad, The 3, 53, 56, 58, 60–61, 64n Essay on Criticism 56–57, 60 Quarterly Review, The 2, 11, 13–14, 32, 34–41, 69, 71, 90, 103, 105, 130, 150, 197, 199, 202 Ralph, James 38, 44n Raven, James 7, 21n

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by ron a n d joh n m u r r ay Smith, Horace 95 Smith, James 95 Smith, Sydney 34 Smollet, Tobias 24 Southey, Charles Cuthbert 99n Southey, Robert 41, 58, 87, 98–99n, 104, 112, 188, 190 St. Clair, William 20n, 61–62, 64, 86, 99n, 118n, 129, 141n, 175n, 181, 194n, 197, 202n Stabler, Jane 56, 64n, 79, 92, 97, 141n, 145, 174n, 177 Stothard, Thomas 119 Strachan, John 25, 39, 44n Stuart, Gilbert 27, 42n Swift, Jonathan 56, 63–65, 82 ‘Verses on the Death of Dr Swift, D.S.P.D’ 64n, 82n. Taylor, John 15, 20n Thomson, George 135 Timperley, C.H 212 Tonson, Jacob 2–3, 20n

Trelawny, Edward 154 Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron 154, 174n Trusler, Rev. John 28, 42n Vail, Jeffrey 47, 63n Walpole, Horace 25 Castle of Otranto, The 25 Weemss, Hester 25, 28, 42n, 44n Weemss, Nancy 23 Wingfield, John 80 Wollstonecraft, Mary 15 Woolf, Virginia 66, 82n Wordsworth, William 16, 22n, 49, 54–55, 75, 86, 99n, 105, 117, 139n, 141n, 147 Essay Supplementary to the Preface 22n, 99n, 117 Wright, Walter 69 Wroe, Ann 174n Zachs, William 24, 26, 42n, 43n

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