In late October or early November 1808, a few weeks after John Murray's seminal meeting with Walter Scott at Ashiestiel, the publisher began to fill a notebook with ideas about the proposed journal. In his memoranda, in categorizing the Quarterly's prospective audience he embraced the whole reading nation, ‘The Parson – Soldier – Lawyer – Statesman’, and so on. He then ambitiously concluded, ‘there should be one article in every number appropriate to each of these classes – the rest to be filled up with subjects of general interest and importance’. His reasoning, though plausible, was impractical as it presupposed the thing most difficult to supply, a stream of ideologically correct writers who could produce copy four times a year specifically targeted to each of these audiences.

More immediately useful were his lists of ‘Books on Subjects desirable for the Review’, subdivided into ‘Already published’ and ‘Books or Subjects already in [the press]’. Having done this preliminary work, on 15 November 1808 he wrote a long letter to Scott in which, apparently for the first time, he took ownership of ‘the plan’ of establishing the new journal, he advocated a temperate tone, and he worried about how effective Gifford would be in the editor's chair. At the end of the letter he promised to share ‘a list of Literary men we may both now and hereafter more or less engage as contributors’ (QRLetter 8). The progenitor of his promised list is preserved in Murray's Quarterly Review planning notes. In his notebook he arranged the prospective contributors’ names under the heads of the three men principally responsible for bringing out the first number – Scott, Gifford, and himself. There are reasons to believe that Murray drew up these lists in consultation with Scott and Gifford and that they record one aspect of his discussions with Scott at Ashiestiel.

Even though only 35 of the 123 men and women in Murray's lists eventually contributed to the Quarterly Review, the lists bear close study, for, taken together, they are a window on the founders’ understanding of the types of articles the journal should cover, the audiences it should address, and the Quarterly's ideology.