QueenSpark began in 1972 as a campaign to turn the Royal Spa buildings in Queens Park into a nursery school rather than a casino, as property developers wanted to do. The struggle succeeded, aided by the circulation of a street newspaper called 'QueenSpark'. This provided information about the campaign and also included a regular feature, the 'Sparchives' column, which focused on a series of reminiscences of the area in its earlier days. But this was only the beginning ...

The success of the campaign and popularity of the newspaper inspired others to continue the process of writing and hence QueenSpark as a community publishing and writing organisation was born. The first book to be published in 1974 was an autobiography. Written by Albert Paul and entitled Poverty-Hardship but Happiness, it detailed the hardship Albert had personally endured and overcome, as well as highlighting the poverty and difficulties experienced by working-class people in the period prior to the Great War.

Having published a life story featuring an 'ordinary' person’s reminiscences, this set a precedent for future publications by QueenSpark. Many of the early books in the mid to late 70s were based on individual people’s memoirs. A typical example is the book A Town Beehive written by Daisy Noakes in 1975. In fact, Daisy started a family trend – she not only wrote her life story, and later published a sequel Faded Rainbow, but also her husband, George Noakes, wrote about his early life in the period before he married Daisy in To be a Farmer's Boy .

Whilst personal stories have always been a mainstay of the QueenSpark collection, in 1983 a new direction could be detected with the publication of Brighton on the Rocks - a more overtly political book, intended as a critique of monetarist policies and the Thatcher government. Written as a collaborative venture, it echoed themes in earlier books such as Les Moss's Live and Learn that, although largely an individual's life story, carried a political message. The 1980s saw the emergence of other stories that could also be seen to have a political focus, including Who Stood Idly By from Alf Johns in 1984, which centres around the politics of the government of the day and, in particular, the policies pursued by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet.

The theme of collaboration and group authorship was continued with the publication of several anthologies. A typical example of which is Paper on the Wind published in 1984. This has a strong feminist influence and contains both poetry and prose emanating from a women’s writing group run by QueenSpark. Over the years, QueenSpark has published many such anthologies, often based on the work produced by writing groups, examples of which are Writers Reign and Tales from the Sanctuary.

In 1988, QueenSpark published Backyard Brighton in association with the Lewis Cohen Urban Studies Centre during a period which culminated in several books featuring the history of Brighton’s urban life. From the streets of Brighton (that no longer existed or were about to be demolished) to Blighty Brighton and Brighton behind the Front (featuring reminiscences of people who lived in the area during the First and Second World Wars) Brighton was seen in a new light!

With the publication of At the Pawnbrokers and Pullman Attendant in 1991, a new generation of books known as Market Books were created. These books were intended to be produced cheaply and sold on market stalls by volunteers. They were printed A5 size in monochrome and differed from the more expensive and glossier publications that had been sold previously. Some were personal life stories such as The Smiling Bakers by George Grout, a member of one of Brighton’s best-known family bakers. Others were collaborative efforts, often therapeutic in nature, such as Life After Stroke and Stroke: Who Cares? written by survivors of strokes and their carers.

Alongside the Market books series, QueenSpark continued to produce its main collection, including the popular 'Daring Hearts' in 1992. This was the outcome of oral history interviews with Lesbians and Gays in the Brighton area. Other themes to be explored through a series of interviews were the interesting and unusual lives of some of Brighton’s Jews in We're Not all Rothschilds. QueenSpark also documented the oral history of working communities, such as the local fishing industry in Catching Stories.

Personal memoirs have continued to be published by QueenSpark, and in the mid Nineties, many featured geographical areas in the Brighton locale - documenting how local communities change over time. Examples include Our Small Corner, Oh What a Lovely Pier and Arthur Thicket's Deckhand, West Pier, a fresh and often humorous look at a young man who came to Brighton in the summer of 1970. And not forgetting The Crowd Roars, in which Ron Cunningham, alias 'the Great Omani', recalls jumping off the West Pier bound in chains!

The year 2000 was commemorated with the publication of an anthology of children’s perspectives of the Millennium, based on diaries and project work undertaken in conjunction with local schools. School Reports continued this theme of encapsulating the memories of school children, albeit this was produced by former pupils of just one school, St. Lukes's. Other publications that focused on childhood recollections were Are you sitting comfortably?’ and Remember the First Time?.