The Morning Post and Daily Pamphlet began publication in 1772, quickly changing its title to the Morning Post or Cheap Daily Advertiser. By early 1773, the title had been changed to the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser --the name which would be retained until 1792. With the issue of 15 December 1792 there was a further title simplification to the Morning Post . The newspaper's early proprietors included the printer and bookseller John Bell and the auctioneer James Christie. The latter made use of the newspaper to give notice of his forthcoming auctions. Throughout its first twenty years, the newspaper was published every day in four large folio pages, at least two-thirds of which were devoted to advertisements and notices. The advertisements ranged widely through forthcoming theatre performances, newly published books, wonder medicines, properties to let, horses for sale, auctions of furniture and pictures, as well as a host of other goods and services. The remaining pages were given to domestic news, with just a few paragraphs on events abroad.

John Bell sold his share in the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser in 1786, and in the following year founded the World and Fashionable Advertiser. He disposed of his interest in the latter in 1792, and in 1794 the World (as it had become) merged with the Morning Post to become the Morning Post and Fashionable World. The first issue of the new title appeared on 1 July 1794. It described its predecessors as 'firm, moderate, and independent' newspapers, and declared it would be 'pre-eminently distinguished for its foreign intelligence, and for an elegant and polished domestic miscellany'. Despite its aspirations, the circulation of the Morning Post and Fashionable World quickly dwindled. In 1795, it was purchased by the journalist Daniel Stuart, who broadened its coverage and soon revived its fortunes. He included pieces on parliamentary reform and defended the revolution in France, while at the same time reporting on fashionable society and giving much space to advertisements. Stuart serialized Thomas Paine's 1796 Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance soon after publication, and attracted such new writers as the poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

On 20 September 1797 the Morning Post and Fashionable World announced that it had purchased the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser. The issue for 2 October 1797 appeared under the title Morning Post and Gazetteer. Stuart continued as proprietor and the newspaper maintained its mix of news from home and abroad, and reports on high society, with advertisements on the first and last of its four folio pages. In 1803 Stuart sold his interest and the Morning Post and Gazetteer entered a new period of decline. It managed to recover and survived—under the shorter title Morning Post —until 1937 when it merged with the Daily Telegraph.