When Robert Hicks, a British book publisher, realized that many of the works of F.F. Bruce, the “Dean of Evangelical Scholarship,” were not readily available, he wanted to correct that situation by republishing them as ebooks – which are easily available anywhere in the world.
Because Professor Bruce’s amazing body of work – more than 50 books and 2,000 articles – was becoming increasingly difficult to access, he contacted Sheila Lukabyo, Professor Bruce’s daughter, and received her encouragement to manage the works of her father with royalties going to ministries such as UCCF, with which Bruce had been involved.
Robert enlisted the help of Larry Stone, an American publisher, and together they formed F.F. Bruce Copyright International to make Bruce’s works available and to encourage an understanding of Professor Bruce’s teaching on the Scripture, to encourage his spirit of humility in approaching the Bible, and to encourage academic scholarship among today’s evangelical students and leaders. F.F. Bruce Copyright International publishes through the Kingsley Books imprint.
Together they contacted nearly twenty of F.F. Bruce’s publishers, confirmed the status of books in print, audited the royalties that were due to Bruce’s heirs, restored the copyrights to three of Professor Bruce’s books, and are publishing high quality ebooks and booklets.
In addition to wanting to promote the works of F.F. Bruce, Robert had an interest in the works of W.E. Vine. In the late 1980s he met Helen, Christine, Winifred, and Jeannette, the daughters of W.E. Vine, who told him that because their father’s dictionary was out of copyright in the United States, they had received very few royalties. On behalf of the Vine estate, Robert worked with Thomas Nelson Publishers in the United States to restore the copyright of Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words and used the royalties for the benefit of the daughters, for Bible distribution, and for the establishment of a retreat center in Spain for young people and missionaries.
While Thomas Nelson – now part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing – continues to publish the dictionary both in print and as an ebook as well as publishing You Can Learn New Testament Greek!, F.F. Bruce Copyright International has published the other writings of W.E. Vine as 11 ebooks.
