Frances Elisabeth Rosemary Lincoln (20 March 1945 – 26 February 2001) was an English independent publisher of illustrated books. She published under her own name and the company went on to become

Frances Lincoln Publishers Frances Elisabeth Rosemary Lincoln (20 March 1945 – 26 February 2001) was an English independent publisher of illustrated books. She published under her own name and the company went on to become Frances Lincoln Publishers. In 1995, Lincoln ...

. In 1995, Lincoln won the ''Woman of the Year for Services to Multicultural Publishing'' award.

Education

Frances Lincoln went "unhappily" to school in

Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population of the Bedford built-up area (including Biddenham and Kempston) was 106,940, making it the second-largest settlement in Bedfordshire, behind Luton, whilst t ...

, moving after a year to St George's School, Harpenden, where she became

Head Girl Head boy and head girl are student leadership roles in schools, representing the school's entire student body. They are normally the most senior prefects in the school. The terms are commonly used in the British education system as well as in Au ...

. Her university education was at

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. (Somerville at that time was a women's college, known in

as "the

bluestocking ''Bluestocking'' is a term for an educated, intellectual woman, originally a member of the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society from England led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), the "Queen of the Blues", including Eli ...

college".) There she read Greats (the Oxford term for traditional courses in the humanities, with emphasis on the ancient classics of Greece and Rome, including philosophy). A fellow-student, the drug smuggler

Howard Marks Dennis Howard Marks (13 August 1945 – 10 April 2016) was a Welsh drug smuggler and author who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak he claimed to have been smuggling consignmen ...

, described her as "vivacious" in his 1996 autobiography '' Mr. Nice''.

Career

In 1970, Lincoln started work as an Assistant Editor at the

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-based publishing firm of

Studio Vista Studio Vista was a British publishing company founded in 1961 that specialised in leisure and design topics. In the 1960s, the firm published works by a number of authors that went on to be noted designers. History Studio Vista was founded by Ceci ...

. She went on to become its managing director. From Studio Vista, she moved to a job with the publisher

Marshall Cavendish Marshall Cavendish is a subsidiary company of Times Publishing Group, the printing and publishing subsidiary of Singapore-based conglomerate Fraser and Neave (which in turn currently owned by ThaiBev, the beverage company in Thailand), and at ...

, and from there to

Weidenfeld and Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld a ...

, where she was given her own imprint. A story that followed her throughout her career, often passed on from employees to new recruits, was of the staff-walkout and demonstration she headed while at Studio Vista in 1975. This was a protest against redundancies proposed by Collier Macmillan, the firm that had come to own Studio Vista. The protest went on for some days, and was described as a strike; it achieved concessions from Collier Macmillan.

Frances Lincoln Publishers

In 1977, Frances went out on her own as an independent publisher/packager, publishing both under her own name and in co-editions. The firm she founded continued as Frances Lincoln Publishers, based in London, until 2018. In August 2011,

The Quarto Group The Quarto Group is a global illustrated book publishing group founded in 1976. It is domiciled in the United States and listed on the London Stock Exchange. Quarto creates and sells illustrated books for adults and children, across 50 countri ...

acquired Frances Lincoln Publishers for £4.5 million, making it the ''Frances Lincoln Children's Book'' imprint. The firm was known for the list of illustrated gardening books it published, and for its illustrated children's books. Among these were David Litchfield's ''The Bear and the Piano'', which won the 2016

Waterstones Waterstones, formerly Waterstone's, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Wa ...

Children's Book Prize for Illustrated Books, and Lizzy Stewart's ''There's a Tiger in the Garden'', which won the same prize in 2017.

Family

Frances Lincoln married John Nicoll, the author of the first book she had commissioned. Nicoll later headed

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universit ...

in the United Kingdom. The couple had a son and two daughters. Lincoln died from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...

aged 55 in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lincoln, Frances 1945 births 2001 deaths People educated at St George's School, Harpenden Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford 20th-century English businesswomen 20th-century English businesspeople Publishers (people) from London English book publishers (people) Deaths from pneumonia in England