Honorary Fellow

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 5925
• Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5062 
• Email: jh241@le.ac.uk
• Office: Room 13, 3-5 Salisbury Road

Biography

John Hinks is currently Chair of the Printing Historical Society, editor of the British Book Trade Index website, a member of the 'Print Networks' conference committee, and a member of the advisory board of the 'Popularization and Media Strategies: 1700-1900' project at the University of Utrecht.

John is also organizer of a conference to be run jointly by the Centre for Urban History and 'Print Networks': Street Literature: Cheap Print, Popular Culture and the Book Trade, University of Leicester, 10-12 July 2012.

Research Interests

• History of the book and print culture
• History of the book trade, especially its networks and urban context: the wealth, status and social mobility of book-trade people
• The book trade in English spa towns
• Popular print culture: the production, distribution and readership of 'street literature'
• Distribution of Catholic devotional literature in early modern England
• The print culture of radical politics

Current Research Projects

The Distribution of Catholic Devotional Literature in Jacobean England

Supported by a Catholic Record Society research grant. Research almost complete. Presented a conference paper at 'Religion and the Book Trade', Aberystwyth, July 2011 - to be published in a forthcoming 'Print Networks' volume.

Book-Trade Networks in English Provincial Towns: 1695-1850

This research, originally supported by a British Academy grant, continues to explore the extent and nature of networks in the book trade from the lapse of the Printing (Licensing) Act in 1695 (which removed restrictions on provincial printing) to 1850, with a particular focus on towns in the English Midlands. Further information is available at www.bbti.bham.ac.uk/communities.

The Book Trade in English Spa Towns in the Long Eighteenth Century

This project is in its early planning stage and will commence in 2012. The research will focus on the unique nature of book-trade activity (especially printing, bookselling and circulating libraries) in spa towns: the extent to which the trade catered for visitors rather than residents, the seasonal nature of the trade, and its contribution to the development of tourism and leisure.

Most Recent Publications

• John Hinks & Catherine Feely (eds.), Historical Networks in the Book Trade (working title, forthcoming, 2013)
• John Hinks & Lisa Peters (eds.), Religion and the Book Trade (working title, forthcoming, 2012)
• John Hinks & Victoria Gardner (eds.), The Early Modern Book Trade (forthcoming, 2012)
• 'The Book Trade in Early Modern Britain: Centres, Peripheries and Networks' in Print Culture and Provincial Cities in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Benito Rial Costas (forthcoming, Brill, 2012)
• John Hinks & Matthew Day (eds.), From Compositors to Collectors: Essays in Book-Trade History ('Print Networks' series - British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2012)
• 'Richard Phillips: Pioneer of Radical Print', The Leicestershire Historian, 47 (2011), pp 22-26
• 24 entries for The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by M F Suarez and H R Woudhuysen (OUP, 2010)
• 'Networks of Print in "Radical Leicester"', The Leicestershire Historian, 46 (2010), pp 21-26
• John Hinks, Catherine Armstrong & Matthew Day (eds.), Periodicals and Publishers: the Newspaper and Journal Trade 1740-1914. (British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2009)
• Maureen Bell and John Hinks, 'The English Provincial Book Trade: Evidence from the British Book Trade Index', The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. V (1695-1830) ed. M Suarez and M Turner (CUP, 2009), pp 335-51
• John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (eds.), Book Trade Connections from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries ('Print Networks' series - British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2008)