Ernest Nister (1842-1909) began his publishing career in 1885 when he acquired a lithographic workshop in Nürnberg and printed books for London publishers. In 1888 he became a publisher in his own right with offices at 24 St. Bride Street, London. He appointed the writer and editor, Robert Ellice Mack, as director.

Nister specialised in high quality colour printing for children in the last quarter of the 19th century. Movable books with various mechanisms became his speciality after 1890 (when be published his first stand-up book) but he also produced numerous picture books, annuals, poetry, nursery rhymes, calendars and greetings cards. He worked with a core of writers, including Clifton Bingham and Robert Ellice Mack, and illustrators, in particular Eveline Lance, Harriett M. Bennett, Edith A. Cubitt and Rosa Petherick.

In the 1890s Nister published a version of the popular tale of John Gilpin with illustrations by Evelyn Stuart Hardy (no. 1511). John Gilpin was a real-life figure in the eighteenth-century who became the subject of a comic poem by William Cowper, first published in the Public Advertiser on 14 November 1782. The poem became highly popular and was illustrated by various artists including George Cruikshank, 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne) and Randolph Caldecott. This illustration by Hardy, although commissioned by Nister, does not appear in the published book and may have been a preliminary drawing or unused illustration.