Thornton Butterworth

Thornton Butterworth was a British publisher who published several of Winston Churchill's autobiographical volumes in the United Kingdom.

In February 1930, Churchill requested 50,000 words published in assembly for My Early Life. Churchill admired him as a publisher and hired him to publish more of his articles and autobiographies. He also published 35,000 words in News of the World for Churchill's sixtieth birthday and was asked to publish three more volumes of his autobiography. Butterworth posted Churchill's autobiographies with 'strong, reddish-purple, calico-texture cloth' and referenced himself on the spines of the books as publisher. Butterworth agreed to pay royalty of 25% of 5000 copies to Churchill, and once the full autobiography read 130,000 words, Butterworth had to raise the price to 25 shillings to balance the publishing costs. Butterworth had to revise his schedule several times to standardize Churchill's standards, but he still had an optimistic attitude about Churchill's work.[1]

The World Crisis (published several times between 1923 and 1931) was another example of a book that Butterworth published, but he didn't just publish Churchill's books, he also published My Campaign in Mesopotamia (pub. 1920) by Charles Townshend and 'Sarah Duchess of Marlborough' (pub. 1932) by Kathleen Campbell.[2]

Butterworth has 265 works available on Open Library between 1653 and 2018, some of which are republished, about political figures, historical situations, science and religion.[3][4]

Butterworth, in London, published 25 publications that weren't in a publication series.[5]

Keystone Library featured a series of publications from London from 1933 to 1942 where at least 68 titles were issued, the publications from 1941 to 1942 were printed by Eyre and Spootiswoode because Butterworth's firm was damaged by a Nazi German bomb during the blitz. Butterworth had been partners with John Long, publisher of the Carlton Classics. Butterworth established his own imprint around in 1919, and throughout the following 20 years his imprint would thrive, being published on a significant amount of biographies, books on travel and literary criticism. Strawbridge's owned the firm before Butterworth bought it. The Keystone Library had some issues, some sheets had gone out of print and some had leftover sheets from the original printing.[6]