Melville House Books

Mary-Kay Wilmers

The great literary review magazine the London Review of Books — better known as the LRB — “has run up mountainous debts of £27m,” or about $44 million, reports Richard Brooks in a Times of London story. Brooks says the debts are “up from £23.2m in the year to March 2008. They have been rising steadily over the past two decades. They were £3.2m in 1994, £8m by 2000 and £16m by 2005.”

The giant amount is “made up of money taken out to keep the magazine afloat, payments to printers and contributors, and an 8% interest rate on existing loans. The LRB has also suffered recently from the dollar-to-sterling exchange rate on funds from its New York-based trust.”

Not to worry, though. That trust is the family trust of editor Mary-Kay Wilmers, which, says Brooks, has allowed Wilmers to continue on with “no intention of the lender seeking repayment of the loan in the near future.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.