With a balcony ‘that faces Piccadilly sideways’, as travel writer Maria Graham once said, number 50 Albemarle Street has stood for generations as the symbol of good publishing and the home of great names in the literary world, particularly in poetry, but also in travel writing and the sciences. Founded by the first John Murray in 1768 at 32 Fleet Street, the firm grew steadily throughout the rest of the century, expanding from bookselling to publishing. The subjects published covered a wide range, from general reference books, such as dictionaries, to specialised ones like medical treatises and, to a lesser extent, works of fiction. When John Murray I died in 1793, he left his son a prosperous business that John Murray II would take to a new location and to new heights.

In 1793 the heir of the dynasty was not yet of age, yet only a few years later he was able to dispense with the guardians designated in his father's will as well as the partner he had inherited with the business; he was then ready to lead the firm forward. It is well known that John Murray II was publisher to Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Washington Irving, Jane Austen, Mrs Rundell (with her successful cookery book), and many other well-known figures, as well as being the creator of the influential Quarterly Review. It is also common knowledge that the elite of the literary and political worlds met frequently at 50 Albemarle Street, and that it was considered a privilege to be invited to one of John Murray's ‘levees’, so well described by Mrs Bray in her autobiography: ‘We found Sir Walter talking to Mr Gifford, then the Editor of the “Quarterly Review”, the room was filled with men and women, and among them several of the principal authors and authoresses of the day’. Lord Byron was often present at these literary meetings while he was in London, and referred to them ironically later as ‘your perpetual levee of politicians – parson-scribblers – and loungers’.

There is, however, a less well-known story related to this house that is as colourful as the meeting of brilliant minds in John Murray's drawing room. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Albemarle Street was the site of dramatic events that strongly affected the lives of those engaged in it.