At the start of the year 1825, John Murray was enjoying financial stability together with professional and social success. In a relatively short number of years he had become a pre-eminent publisher in the country and his influential journal, the Quarterly Review, was sought after by writers and readers alike for its political and literary articles which carried great weight in their respective spheres. Moreover, it was considered a privilege to be invited to one of Murray's famous levees at Albemarle Street, as in his drawing room the cream of the social, political, and literary worlds interacted most days of the week.

One major difficulty for the publisher however, had been the retirement of William Gifford who had been editor of the Quarterly Review since its creation in 1809. This difficulty had been resolved for the time being with the appointment in Gifford's place of John Taylor Coleridge, a London barrister and nephew of the poet. At that time, Coleridge was not fully committed, as he appeared to prefer the practice of law to his new position, but Murray's friends from the Admiralty, especially John Wilson Croker and John Barrow, were always ready to lend a hand either in the task of editing the journal or contributing articles for it.

When the plan of starting a newspaper in 1825 was conceived, John Murray was not new to the experience. Five years earlier he had entered into a partnership with his friends John Wilson Croker and Charles Knight for the publication of the Guardian, a weekly Conservative periodical that closed down in 1824. Instead of becoming discouraged, Murray took this negative experience as a store of information for future attempts at newspaper publishing, and in 1825 he was again involved in a similar, although more ambitious venture. The commonly held view is that it was a very young Benjamin Disraeli who convinced his father's publisher friend to start a daily newspaper, which is an extraordinary notion still held by many. After the publication failed a mere six months following its launch, the public, including Benjamin's own mother, wondered how an experienced man of business could have been persuaded by a mere youth to be part of such a reckless scheme.