No one can expect a fair verdict from posterity if their story is told by their worst enemies, and such is the case for the Representative newspaper.Most versions of its story available in the biographies of the notable men who took part in it are based on the accounts made by John Hunt, of the Examiner, or the novels and letters of Benjamin Disraeli; unfortunately, neither man was ever wholly truthful or free from bias. The story of the Representative, told from the perspective of the newspaper itself and not from that of its detractors, exposes a myriad of subtle undertones and unexpected connections. To complicate matters even further, a variety of documents scattered across several archives, provide surprising replies to a few key questions: Did Benjamin Disraeli set up the newspaper single-handedly as he gives to understand in his letters of 1825? And why did he disappear so suddenly from Albemarle Street and the newspaper in February 1826? And the biggest question: who was the editor of the Representative?

But questions answered necessarily bring about new questions. On the whole, the fresh perspective of the following pages adds complexity to the apparently simple affair of the rise and fall of a nineteenth-century newspaper. Various external circumstances coexisted during the inception of the Representative. Embedded within the story there is, for instance, the clash of egos of the men who took part in the planning of the publication, notably those of prominent politicians and men of letters such as John Wilson Croker and John Gibson Lockhart were; the execution of personal vendettas, as in the case of John Hunt against John Murray II, or the realisation of private agendas, such as becoming rich quickly and gaining political influence, which was the final aim of Benjamin Disraeli. These situations had little or nothing to do with the journalistic quality, or lack of it, of the newspaper as such, but they nevertheless influenced its progression and finally decided its fate.

The Representative began its arduous career on 25 January 1826, long before it was ready and at the worst possible time, for the previous December had seen the start of the economic crisis in Britain.