Benjamin Markovits writes:

Murray was not a great letter-writer. This collection reminds us that the hurried, casual, ungrammatical, occasionally unintelligible style of business communication substantially predated the email. It has been said of Byron’s letters that he ‘could not stop’ – the dash for him did the work of some grammar and much punctuation. Murray’s style depended on the same device, but in his hands it is a clumsy instrument. Byron’s collected letters can be read cover to cover without any gloss. Murray’s letters are usually shorter than Nicholson’s excellent annotations to them.

(LRB 20 March 2008)

Liverpool | hardback 576 pp. |ISBN: 9781846310690