Cosseting a bestselling author

There was once a Greek called Herostratus, who, in search of enduring fame, set fire to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. (A successful strategy, clearly.) It’s odd to think that the second John Murray’s permanent fame rests on such an act of destruction, since in undertaking it he was not, like Herostratus, trying to make his name remembered. He did it in all good faith to secure the reputation of what he was destroying.

On 17 May 1824, six of Lord Byron’s friends, having read his two volumes of posthumous memoirs, decided to burn them as obscene and damaging to his reputation. Murray was only one of the group, but he will always be associated with the atrocious act because the burning took place in his firm’s fireplace.

We need to remember that Murray did this out of piety and respect for Byron’s writing. What looks like an act of wanton philistine vandalism was undertaken by someone who worked very hard and very closely with Byron for ten years of his career — someone, moreover, who published Beppo and parts of Don Juan with pleasure and admiration.