If I can make it to Scotland, these documents could provide clues (or answers) about the rights to Toy’s books, and whether they can be re-printed or not. We do have a copying service, but it would be very expensive to contain copies of all the material we hold. There is quite a lot of material so if you are able to visit Edinburgh and look through it in person this would be the best way of accessing it.
In addition we have business ledgers which provide details about production costs and sales. Yes, we have book files for publications by Toy in the John Murray Archive.īook files contain correspondence, contracts and paperwork relating to production, sales and rights of each publication (arranged chronologically). Here’s an excerpt of the Archive’s response e-mail: Winner, winner, chicken dinner, folks! Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Scotland… at some point? In 2015, business publisher Nicholas Brealey became an imprint of John Murray.Īfter this, the National Library of Scotland acquired the John Murray Archive, which includes documents such as “incoming and outgoing correspondence, author papers, and business papers.” The history here is actually quite fascinating, as the John Murray house went on to publish authors including Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species.’įor the purposes of my search, I decided to e-mail the John Murray Archive, inquiring about any paperwork relating to Barbara’s books. Since then, it has been an imprint under Lagardère brand Hachette UK. In 2002, John Murray was acquired by Hodder Headline, which was itself acquired in 2004 by the French conglomerate Lagardère Group.
In the Books section, the writer notes that “all but the last were published by John Murray in London.” As I’ve stated, one of my goals is to find a way to re-print Barbara Toy’s books, so her publisher seemed like a logical place to start. I find myself returning to this page again and again, discovering little nuggets here and there, which inevitably lead me off in one direction or another.
I’ll admit, Barbara Toy’s Wikipedia page is excellent.
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