Howard Timmins
Howard Timmins (1904-1984) was a South African businessman and publisher.
Also found as Howard B. Timmins
Biography
Born in Kimberley in 1904 to Anglo-Irish parents who had come from England. His father was a schoolmaster and they returned to England in 1906 to settle in Barnet.
As a young man he studied publishing and joined George Allen and Unwin. In 1927 he returned to South Africa to become a representative of John Dickinson, the manufacturers of Croxley and other paper brands and in 1936 the South African agent for Hodder and Stoughton.
In 1948 Timmins eventually founded his own publishing company ( variously referred to as Howard Timmins Publishers, Howard Timmins & Co. or simply Howard Timmins) and soon established himself as a major force in local publishing, carving a niche for himself in the publishing, promoting and nurturing what has been described as popular non-fiction writing.
Many of his writers of popular histories were either professional journalists or people who had written numerous articles for magazines. Among them were such popular authors as Lawrence G. Green, TV Bulpin and Eric Rosenthal.
Authors in the field of the performing arts included Lewis Sowden, Thelma Gutsche and Donald Inskip, .
Theatre and film histories published by Timmins include such valuable resources as The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895-1940 (Gutsche, 1972), Forty Little Years: The Story of a Theatre. (Inskip, 1972), Stage by Stage: The Leonard Schach Story. (Inskip, 1977)
He also published some play texts, including The Kimberley Train by Lewis Sowden, 1976/67??)
Timmins himself retired in 1974 and his publishing company was taken over by Anthony Ashford and was absorbed into Struik within ten years.
Sources
https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Howard_Timmins
David Hilton-Barber. 2018. Howard Timmins and his Protégés Footprint Press.[1]
Kathy Munro. 2018. Review of Howard Timmins and his Protégés, The Heritage Portal[2]
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