John Lloyd Preece was a son of Frederick William Preece, founder in 1907 of the Adelaide bookselling and publishing firm F. W. Preece Pty Ltd. John and his brother Edgar became partners in the business on 1 December 1924. Frederick Preece died in 1928, but the business continued an active literary publishing program in the 1930s and 1940s. John had studied English at the University of Adelaide, and in 1926 visited Italy with Lionel Lindsay.
He is credited with establishing the literary magazine
Desiderata in 1929, which was published by
F. W. Preece. John wrote some non-fiction books under the psuedonym 'Lloyd Rhys'. He ran a branch of the business in Victoria Arcade in Sydney from 1934, but returned to Adelaide in 1946, the year of Edgar's death. After his retirement in 1957 he lived in Italy until his death in 1969.
