The Morning Post
Contributions
- James Mackintosh
- journalist
- Robert Merry
- journalist
- William Jackson
- journalist
- John Bell
- publisher
Related resources
- has part
- To the authors of Le Républicain has translation
Notes
Founded by John Bell in 1769, the London Morning Post began life as a scandal sheet whose first two editors were the Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley and the Rev. William Jackson ("Dr Viper").
Originally a Whig paper, it was bought in 1795 from Richard Tattersall by Daniel Stuart, secretary to the parliamentary reform group, the Society of the Friends of the People. Stuart had been printing it from 1788. Within two years, Stuart had raised its circulation from 350 a day to over a thousand. A combination of talented writers, good management and buying out the Gazetteer and the Telegraph would make the Post the leading rival to London's top daily, the Morning Chronicle. From March 1798, it trimmed towards government policy after Stuart was summonsed before the Privy Council. By the time Stuart sold it in 1803 to Nicholas Byrne (for £25,000) its circulation had increased to 4500.
Its contributors included James Mackintosh, Robert Merry, D.E. MacDonnel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (its political editor from 1797-1800), Robert Southey, Charles Lamb and William Wordsworth who contributed, unpaid, some political sonnets. Coleridge contributed 76 articles on foreign affairs and constitutional matters, including a detailed analysis of new French constitution proclaimed by Napoléon (7 Dec 1797), 'Fire, Famine and Slaughter: a War Eclogue (Jan 1798), which used Macbeth’s witches as a metaphor for Pitt’s warmongering, and ‘Advice to the Friends of Freedom’, a devastating portrait of Pitt with an acute psychological analysis of his political shortcomings (19 March 1800).
Url to British Newspaper Archive only has copies from 1801 onwards.