He is considered to be one of the first literary agents in the modern sense and to have placed relations between authors and publishers on a more professional and fair basis.
His novella Typhoon, which was published in The Pall Mall Magazine was the first piece of writing by Conrad to be handled by Pinker.
Conrad's engagement of an agent to represent him was seen as violating a gentlemanly code of conduct by William Blackwood, publisher of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the periodical in which several of Conrad's important early works, including Heart of Darkness, had been published.
Upon her death in 1927, he married the actress Adrienne Morrison, mother of the Bennett sisters (Barbara, Constance, and Joan).
Eric's stepson John Basil Watney's (biographer of the Churchills) second wife was theatre scene designer Antoinette Rose Pratt Barlow (1917-1981).