TIMES SUED FOR LIBEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13744, 8 May 1908, Page 5

TIMES SUED FOR LIBEL.

QUEEN VICTORIA LETTERS.

THE COST OF PUBLICATION.

By Telegraph.—fret* As«cciation.— . London, May 6. The action of Mr. John Murray, publisher, against the proprietors of j the Times newspaper for damages j for libel has begun before Mr. Jus- i tice Darling and a. special jury in j the King's Bench Division" of the j High Court of Justice. • i The action is based on two letters signed " Artifex,'*' which appeared j in the Times following the publica- ] tion by Mr. Murray of " The Leb | "iters of Queen Victoria," and deal- : ing with the price charged for the i book. ■..•"'■:. .:■-./" Mr. Murray, in his evidence, gave details of the enormous cost of producing the book, and stated that on the first edition of 10,000 copies his profit was 2s 3|d per copy.;.' . ' The first of the letters containing the. alleged libels was published in ihe Times on October 19 last, '" Artifex"alleging that the. ; price (£3 3s),i at which the three volumes "were issued" *\vlis "simple extortion." X He went' on. ■; to say that " more ■ than two-thirds of '.. the ' price charged' for 'the book 'represented an arbitrary addition to the natural price. of the book, which would be absolutely impossible if books were published- under the ordinary competitive conditions applying to other productions. The anonymous writer went on to say that the literary contents of this volume are not Mr.' Murray's either by authorship or by purchase." He; referred Uj the. unique,. |iorsonality of Queen Victoria, described her letters as part of the national archives, and characterised as " intolerable that a publisher entrusted with the task of making them accessible to the public should treat them as his personal property, and should put upon them a. surtax of 43s over and above all reasonable remuneration for all concerned." Finally, Mr. Murray was subjected to the gross imputation that "he had exploited : the great personality of Queen Victoria for his own ends." ' In the Times'of October 26 was given an extract from a'letter written to the Times by Mr.Murray's solicitors. In this letter appeared the following:—" The work is. not Mr. Murray's property; he has been merely employed as the publisher, bearing the cost of its production, and he will be remunerated by a. fraction of the net profits." The Times said: "We .willingly give publication to this statement, and regret any mis-statement or error our correspondent may have made." "Artifex," however, in the following day's Times regretted if he had done Mr. Murray an injustice, saying that it was a mere accident that Mr, Murray's name appeared, rather than another publisher's, .and finishing with this inneundo : " He is to be remunerated by a. fraction of the profits. What fraction? A fraction is anything less than the whole."