William Pinnock (3 February 1782 in Alton, Hampshire – 21 October 1843 in London) was a British publisher and educational writer.
In 1817 he went to London and, in partnership with Samuel Maunder, began to publish cheap educational works.
The firm's first productions were a series of Catechisms, planned by Pinnock, consisting of short popular manuals, arranged in the form of question and answer, of the different departments of knowledge.
[1] Pinnock is mentioned, as a depressing set of texts, in contrast to Washington Irving's stories, in George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss (1860): Maggie, speaking about her 'gloomy fancy' to her cousin Lucy says: "Perhaps it comes from the school diet – watery rice-pudding spiced with Pinnock.
Let us hope it will give way before my mother's custards and this charming Geoffrey Crayon."