Julian Pooley, FSA, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester
The papers accumulated and collected by John Nichols and his family of printers and antiquaries between 1745 and 1873 are a major source for the study of the book trade, of antiquarianism and of lives and letters in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As proprietors of one of London’s leading printing houses and editors of the Gentleman’s Magazine, they were at the heart of a national network of information exchange between members of the London and provincial book trade, antiquaries, bibliographers, collectors, artists, engravers and writers. Their personal research interests ranged from literary biography to local history and from genealogy to the collecting of autograph letters.