Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Tinsley, William
TINSLEY, WILLIAM (1831–1902), publisher, born in 1831, was the son of a Hertfordshire gamekeeper. He was educated at a dame's school, and as a child worked in the fields. He came to London in 1852 and obtained employment at Notting Hill. He joined his younger brother Edward in the publishing business of Tinsley Brothers in Holywell Street, Strand, in 1854. They afterwards moved to Catherine Street, Strand. After issuing some small volumes of essays by W. B. Jerrold and J. E. Ritchie, their first serious venture was G. A. Sala's novel 'The Seven Sons of Mammon' (1861). The next success of the firm was with Miss Braddon's (Mrs. Maxwell) 'Lady Audley's Secret' (1862) and 'Aurora Floyd' (1863). They published 'The New Quarterly Review' (1854-9), but lost money in supporting ’The Library Company,' founded to rival Messrs. Mudie's and Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son's circulating libraries. Edward Tinsley died at a little over the age of thirty in 1866 {Athen(mm, 22 Sept. 1866). In 1868 Tinsley started 'Tinsley's Magazine,' which was for some time edited by Edmund Yates and afterwards by the publisher himself; it continued till 1881. For many years the firm was the chief producer of novels and light literature in London. Among the authors whose works were issued by the Tinsleys were Ouida (Louise de la Ramée), William Black, Thomas Hardy, Sir W. H. Russell, J. S. Le Fanu, Joseph Hatton, Tom Hood, Blanchard Jerrold, Justin McCarthy, Andrew Halliday, Mrs. Cashel Hoey, Sir Walter Besant. Viscount Morley, Benjamin Leopold Farjeon, George Meredith, G. A. Lawrence (Guy Livingstone), Mrs. Henry Wood, Edmund Yates, Henry Kingsley, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Riddell, Rhoda Broughton, Jean Ingelow, Mrs. OUphant, Florence Marryat, Anthony Trollope, Mortimer Collins, Wilkie Collins, James Payn, Sir Richard Burton, George MacDonald, Captain Mayne Reid, W. Harrison Ainsworth, Ameha B. Edwards, George A. Henty, G. Manville Fenn, and Alfred Austin.
In 1878 Tinsley failed, with liabilities amounting to about 33,000l. He published in 1900 his reminiscences of the authors and actors he had known, under the title of 'Random Recollections of an Old Publisher,' 2 vols., with a photogravure after a photograph. He died at Wood Green, Middlesex, on 1 May 1902.
[The Bookseller, 8 May 1902; The Times, 3 May 1902; The Publishers' Circular, 10 May 1902; H. Sutherland Edwards, Personal Recollections, 1900, pp. 134-42 (doubtful accuracy); G. A. Sala, Life, 1895, i. 425; E. Yates, Recollections, 1884, ii. 87-88; S. M. Ellis, W. H. Ainsworth and his Friends, 1911, passim.]