| AdminHistory | Son of Thomas Butter, a small London stationer, who died c1589; his mother continued the business until she married another stationer named Newbery, 1594; Butter was admitted a freeman of the Stationers' Company per patrimonium, 1604; entered on the company's registers his first publication 'The Life and Death of Cavaliero Dick Boyer', 1604; obtained permission to print 'The Interlude of Henry the 8th', 1605; published several sermons and tracts, 1605-1607; with John Busby, published William Shakespeare's 'King Lear', 1607; printed Dekker's 'Belman of London', 1609; published a folio edition of Chapman's translation of the 'Iliad', 1611; from an early date, turned his attention to the compilation and publication of pamphlets of news, achieving considerable success; issued an account of two recent murders, including the famous "Yorkshire tragedy", 1605; issued a report of the trial of the Yorkshire murderer, Walter Calverley, 1605; issued an account of the expedition to Guiana in 1605, 1607; issued 'Newes from Lough ffoyle in Ireland', 1608; issued 'The Originall Ground of the present Warres of Sweden', 1609; issued 'Newes from Spain', 1611; with William Shefford, published a quarto sheet entitled 'Newes from most parts of Christendom' to rival another publisher's 'The Weekly Newes from Italy, Germanie, &c', 1622; the success of this, Butter's first attempt at a newspaper, warranted him in issuing, with Thomas Archer, another budget of news from the continent, written (probably by himself) in the form of letters from foreign correspondents; thereafter Butter's chief business was journalism, compiling and issuing frequent news reports, which was instrumental in creating the London press; the news sheet was mainly compiled from similar sheets published abroad, giving little information about home affairs; Butter gained notoriety as a collector of news and was satirised by contemporary dramatists including Ben Jonson; began a series of half-yearly volumes of collected foreign news, under such titles as 'The German Intelligencer', 1630; with Nicholas Bourne, was granted by Charles I rights of publishing foreign news for twenty-one years, paying yearly towards the repair of St Paul's £10, 1638; his weekly sheet was prohibited by the licenser of the press, 1639; issued a continuation on foreign affairs, 1640; in his later years, varied his news sheets with a few plays, issuing the second part of Dekker's 'Honest Whore' in 1630, but made over the copyrights of all plays in his possession to a printer named Flessher, 1639; apparently retired from business by 1641; died, apparently in poverty, 1664. |
| CustodialHistory | Part of the library of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), linguistic psychologist, founder of the Orthological Institute and originator of the language system Basic English, whose interests in language systems are reflected in the subject matter of his collection, which comprised individual manuscripts and manuscript collections dating from the 14th to the 20th century. |