In his first year, Hawkins reprinted John Marston's The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, a work originally issued by Matts in 1598.
Hawkins's connection with the Shakespeare canon started in 1628; an entry in the Stationers' Register, dated 1 March that year, records the transfer of the rights to Othello from Thomas Walkley, the publisher of the play's first quarto (1622), to Hawkins.
In his preface to Philaster, Hawkins compares the plays of English Renaissance drama to gold, and publishers to "merchant adventurers."
[4] Hawkins published a range of contemporary literature in his generation, including a 1629 edition of Hero and Leander (Marlowe's poem with Chapman's continuation), and the 1619 and 1622 editions of the Nosce Teipsum of the poet John Davies of Hereford.
One of Hawkins's final projects was the first English edition of Mathematical Recreations (1633), by Jean Leurechon (alias "Hendrik van Etten")[5] — translated by Francis Malthus, and printed by Thomas Cotes, the same man who printed the Second Folio.