User:JBPinker/sandbox

James Brand Pinker (literary agent)
James Brand Pinker, (1863–1922), known as J.B., started one of the earliest literary agency businesses in the United Kingdom, following hard on the heels of Alexander Pollock Watt and before Albert Curtis Brown arrived on the agency scene. Many of his clients were part a new wave of modernist writers, artists and playwrights who emerged at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Contracts with authors were not exclusive at that time, but at various points during their careers he represented many writers, notably : Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Ford Maddox Ford, E.M. Forster, John Galsworthy, Violet Hunt, Henry James, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde.

Early Life and Career
J.B.was born in London in 1863 and, according to census information, was the seventh of nine children by William Pinker, monumental stonemason, and his wife, Matilda. Raised in Peckham, South East London, little is known about his education, although he would have been amongst the first to benefit from access to schooling as a result of William Forster's Elementary Education Act of 1870.

J.B. started his working life as clerk to the chief engineer at Tilbury Docks. In his spare time he was a reader for a publishing house. In 1887 he left his job at Tilbury to pursue a career in journalism having secured a post as diplomatic correspondent for The Levant Herald in what was then Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey. Returning to England in 1891, he worked as a literary reviewer for the London weekly illustrated periodical Black and White where he progressed to Editor. Subsequently he helped to launch Pearson's Magazine. As a periodical editor he was deluged by manuscripts for short stories and serializations from writers hopeful of getting their work noticed by the larger publishing houses. With a good eye for knowing which stories would achieve a popular readership J.B. began to champion some of the writers to the book publishers and saw the opportunity of negotiating on their behalf.

James B. Pinker & Son, opened for business in January, 1896, at Arundel Street, Strand, London. Advertisements he placed described that the firm made a special point of helping young authors in the early stages of their career, when the aid of advisers with expert knowledge of the literary market and the publishing trade is even more than usually necessary. In the early 1900s J.B. branched out his business to New York, where he supported writers both sides of the Atlantic in finding publishers for their works.

Agency closure
At the height of his success, J.B. died of pneumonia, age 59, during a business trip to New York in 1922. His company passed to his son, Eric Pinker who had joined the business not long after his return from military duty during World War I with the Royal Artillery in France. With the help of J.B.'s loyal staff, Eric continued the work on the wave of J.B.'s business achievements. Keen to exploit the emerging cinematic 'Talkies' film industry in the United States, Eric Pinker emigrated permanently to the U.S.A. in 1931. He used the profits from the U.K. operation to fund the expansion and persuaded his younger brother, Ralph Pinker, to manage the London office in his absence. The brothers led indulgent lifestyles and had less business acumen and drive than their father, which resulted in mismanagement of the company and its ultimate demise.