More about "J.B"

"You could have little idea of what the literary world was like unless you imagine that Scotsman as looming always somewhere in the background of lettered thoughts"

Ford Madox Ford


James Brand Pinker established himself as a literary agent in mid-January 1896. When he died twenty six years later, he was acknowledged as the greatest literary agent of his time.

He was born in 1863 and came from a rather modest background. He left school early to work as a clerk at Tilbury Docks in east London.

At the age of 27, in 1888, he began work as a correspondent for the Levant Herald, one of the English dailies in Constantinople, where he remained for three years. How he began his literary interest there is unknown, but he undoubtedly improved his social position during this time through his involvement with Constantinople diplomats. He did enough to convince Elizabeth Seabrooke, from a much more substantial family than his, to sail out from England to marry him.

James and Elizabeth returned to England in 1891 where James became assistant editor of the illustrated weekly "Black & White" in London under the editorship of C.N. Williamson.

The first issue of "Black & White" was published on 6 February 1891. In its early years, articles and stories by the likes of Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James brought J.B. into direct contact with key novelists. Among the staff of "Black & White" were M.H. Spielman, the art critic, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, Eden Phillpotts and Violet Hunt, the intimate friend of Ford Madox Ford.

Violet Hunt recalled those days:

"I had known J.B. as a boy in the office....he and I used to race to get the foreign stamps out of the Editor's wastepaper basket for our collections."

But Pinker was in fact doing a lot more than collect stamps whilst at "Black & White". He was learning to understand popular literary taste and was also moonlighting as a reader for a publishing house. From there, he moved to become Editor of a new journal, Pearson's Magazine.

He probably intended to do no more than launch the journal, for he resigned at the end of 1895, before the first issue appeared. The aim of Pearson's was to entertain the great public, so the initial choice of Pinker for editor suggests that his capabilities ranged widely.

In mid-January 1896, recognising the need for a powerful business influence on the literay world, he established himself as a literary agent in Granville House on Arundel Street. It was a case of gamekeeper turned poacher.