1719
Publication of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, widely considered the first novel in the English language
1737
John McMurray is born in Edinburgh to Robert McMurray, a lawyer, and his wife, Jean
1754
Birth of the Reverend George Crabbe, poet, surgeon and clergyman
1759
The British Museum - one of the first national museums - is opened to the public in London
1762
John McMurray is commissioned into the 34th Company of Marines as a second lieutenant
1768
The publishing firm is founded when John McMurray buys the bookselling business of William Sandby at 32 Fleet Street; in reaction to anti-Scottish sentiments in London, he changes his name to "Murray"
1771
Sir Walter Scott is born
1774
Birth of Archibald Constable, publisher and bookseller
1774
Donaldson v Beckett ruling in the House of Lords holds that copyright of published works is not perpetual, but subject to statutory limits
1774
Birth of Robert Southey, poet
1775
Jane Austen is born
1776
Birth of William Blackwood, publisher
1778
John Murray II is born, the son of John Murray and his second wife, Hester
1779
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, is born
1780
William Wilberforce is elected Member of Parliament
1780
Birth of Mary Fairfax, later Somerville, a polymath and noted science writer
1780 - 1840
The Industrial Revolution takes place
1785
Birth of Lady Caroline Ponsonby, later Lamb, aristocrat and novelist
1786
Birth of John Cam Hobhouse (1st Baron Broughton), politician, diarist and friend of Lord Byron
1788
George Gordon Byron (6th Baron Byron) is born
1788
John Murray I publishes the first volume of the English translation of Johann Kaspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy, in partnership with Joseph Johnson
1789
Start of the French Revolution
1791
English scientist, Michael Faraday, a pioneer in the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry, is born in London
1793
War breaks out between England and the French Republic
1793
John Murray I dies and his son enters into an apprenticeship with Samuel Highley, a former assistant who now became manager of the firm
1794
Byron begins his studies at Aberdeen Grammar School
1797
Scottish geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, is born in Angus
1801 - 1804
Byron attends Harrow School
1801
Act of Union
1802
The Treaty of Amiens temporarily ends hostilities between England and France
1802
The Edinburgh Review is founded by Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Henry Brougham and Francis Horner, and published by Archibald Constable
1803 - 1815
Napoleonic Wars
1804
Birth of Benjamin Disraeli, politician, writer and two-time Prime Minister
1805
John Murray publishes the first mass-market cookery book: A New System of Domestic Cookery, by a Lady [Maria Rundell]
1805
Byron enters Trinity College, Cambridge, where he meets John Cam Hobhouse, John Edleston and Francis Hodgson
1805
Marriage of Caroline Ponsonby to William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
1806
Byron writes The Cornelian, inspired by a gift from John Edleston
1806
Ridge of Newark prints the first volume of Byron's poetry, Fugitive Pieces, which Byron promptly recalls and burns
1807
John Murray II marries Anne, daughter of the late Charles Elliot, an Edinburgh bookseller and publisher
1807
Byron's Hours of Idleness is printed and published by Ridge of Newark
1807
Slavery Trade Act
1807
The Slave Trade Act prohibits the slave trade in the British Empire
1808
Birth of Caroline Sheridan, later Norton, author and social reformer
1808
John Murray III is born to John Murray II and his wife, Anne Elliot
1808
The Edinburgh Review prints a harsh anonymous review (by Henry Brougham) of Byron's Hours of Idleness
1809 - 1967
The Quarterly Review is founded to provide opposition to the Whiggish politics of the Edinburgh Review; it remains in circulation for over 150 years
1809
Byron responds to Brougham's harsh review by writing English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which is published anonymously
1809
Birth of Elizabeth Rigby, later Eastlake, author and art critic
1809
Byron embarks on a Grand Tour through the Mediterranean, avoiding much of Europe due to the Napoleonic Wars
1809
Birth of William Gladstone, statesman and four-time Prime Minister
1809
Charles Darwin is born
1811
Byron's mother, Catherine Gordon Byron, dies
1812
Murray's publishing firm moves to 50 Albemarle Street, where it remains for the next 191 years
1812
Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, cantos I and II, are offered for public sale by Murray
1812
Byron uses his maiden speech in the House of Lords to oppose the Frame Work Bill, which introduced more severe penalties for Luddite behaviour
1812
Byron begins an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb
1813
Murray publishes Byron's The Giaour
1813
Murray publishes Byron's Bride of Abydos
1813
David Livingstone is born
1813
John Murray II secures a lucrative contract to publish the Navy List; begins styling himself as Bookseller to the Admiralty
1814
Murray publishes Byron's The Corsair, Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte and Lara
1814
New Copyright Act is enacted
1814
The first of the Waverley Novels, Waverley, or Tis Sixty Years Since, is published by Archibald Constable & Co.; author Walter Scott chooses to remain anonymous
1815
Murray introduces Byron to Sir Walter Scott; the two form a long-lasting friendship
1815
Jane Austen moves her work to the Murray firm from Thomas Egerton. John Murray publishes Emma
1815
Byron marries Anne Isabella Noel Milbanke; known as Annabella, or Lady Byron
1815
Augusta Ada Byron, the daughter of Lord and Lady Byron is born; she would later become better known by her married name, Ada Lovelace
1816
Robert Cooke (cousin of John Murray III) is born; he later becomes a key member of the firm
1816
Murray publishes Byron's Parisina, Siege of Corinth, Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems and canto III of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
1816
Lady Byron leaves Byron, taking Ada; Byron signs a Deed of Separation on April 21
1816
In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and John Polidori rent the Villa Diodati in Switzerland; in June they are joined by Mary and Percy Shelley and tell each other the ghost stories which will later become cornerstones of the Gothic genre - Frankenstein and The Vampyre
1817
Austen Henry Layard is born in Paris
1817
Murray publishes Byron's Manfred and Lament of Tasso
1817
Jane Austen dies. Her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey are published, posthumously, by the House of Murray
1817
Clara Allegra Byron, the illegitimate child of Lord Byron and the teenage Claire Clairmont, is born in Bath on 12th January
1817
Byron sells Newstead Abbey, his family's ancestral home
1818
Murray publishes Byron's Beppo anonymously
1818
Murray publishes Childe Harold's Pilgrimage canto IV
1818
Byron begins the first canto of Don Juan
1819
Murray publishes Don Juan cantos I and II anonymously
1819
Maria Rundell asks the firm to stop publishing Domestic Cookery; a court case ensues
1819
Byron announces that he has given his memoirs to a friend, Thomas Moore, to publish after his death
1819
Queen Victoria is born
1819
After falling in love with the newly married Italian aristocrat, Teresa Guiccioli, Byron moves to Ravenna to be near her; during this time he writes his Ravenna Diary and continues Don Juan
1820
Murray publishes Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, at the instigation of Irving's friend, Sir Walter Scott
1820
King George III dies and is succeeded by his son, George IV
1821
Murray offers Byron 1,000 guineas for Don Juan cantos III, IV and V and an additional 1,000 guineas for Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari
1821
Murray publishes Don Juan cantos III, IV, and V, as well as Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari and Cain
1821
With the poet's blessing, Thomas Moore sells Byron's memories to Murray for the sum of £2,100; later he changes his mind and the deal is renegotiated to give Moore and he the power to buy back the memoirs during Byron's lifetime
1821 - 1829
Greek War of Independence
1822
Byron expresses a desire to end his connection with Murray after Murray publishes Don Juan anonymously and omits Byron's dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe
1822
Murray publishes Byron's Werner
1822
Robert Peel becomes Home Secretary
1822
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns in his boat, the Don Juan
1822
While boarding at a convent in Italy, Allegra Byron dies at age five
1823
Maria Rundell accepts Murray's offer of £2,100 for the rights to Domestic Cookery
1823
Byron moves to Missolonghi in Greece, becoming involved in the Greek War of Independence
1824
Murray publishes John Franklin's account of his doomed expedition to the mouth of the Coppermine River in 1819
1824
Byron takes ill in Greece while planning a naval attack on Lepanto in support of the Greek rebellion
1824
Weakened by illness and possible sepsis from unsterilised medical instruments, Byron dies in Missolonghi, Greece, at the age of 36
1824
After much debate between Byron's friends, Wilmot Horton (acting for Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh), Colonel Francis Doyle (acting for Lady Byron), Moore, Hobhouse and Murray gather in front of the fireplace at 50 Albermarle Street and burn Byron's memoirs
1826
William Wilberforce resigns from Parliament
1826
John Murray II and Benjamin Disraeli establish The Representative, a daily newspaper which fails within months
1827
While studying geology and minerology at the University of Edinburgh, John Murray III attends a lecture given by Sir Walter Scott in which he reveals himself to be the author of the Waverley novels
1827
Archibald Constable dies
1827
Michael Faraday's first work, Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry is published by Murray
1830
John Murray II becomes a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society
1830
The first edition of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology is published by the house of Murray. Though little known today, this and other work by Lyell would help form Darwin's thinking around the processes of evolution
1830 - 1833
John Murray publishes Botanical Miscellany, a short-lived botany magazine edited by botanist and illustrator, William Jackson Hooker
1831
Murray begins publishing the journal of the Royal Geographic Society
1831
Birth of Isabella Lucy Bird (later Bishop), explorer, photographer and travel writer
1831
David Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton is published as part of the Murray's Family Library series; Brewster would later expand this to the fuller Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, published in 1855.
1831 - 1836
The second surveying expedition of HMS Beagle, during which Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands and began to develop his theory of evolution
1832
Sir Walter Scott dies
1832
The Reverend George Crabbe dies
1832
The Representation of the People Act, also known as the Great Reform Act, introduces wide-ranging changes to the electoral system in England and Wales
1834
John Murray II publishes Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences
1834
William Blackwood dies
1834
Robert Peel's first term as Prime Minister
1834
Lord Melbourne's first term as Prime Minister
1835
Lord Melbourne's second term as Prime Minister; during his premiership, he faces accusations of an extramarital affair with Caroline Norton
1835
Alongside Caroline Herschel, Mary Somerville is the first woman to be elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society
1836
John Murray begins publishing Murray's Handbooks for Travellers, the first travel guide books
1836
John Murray III becomes a co-partner of the firm with his father, John Murray II
1836
Murray publishes Caroline Norton's poem, A Voice from the Factories
1837
Robert Cooke joins the firm
1837
Queen Victoria's accession