Arthur John Butler

Arthur John Butler (21 June 1844 – 26 February 1910), was an English scholar, editor, and mountaineer, professor of Italian language and literature at University College London.

He worked in the Education office in Whitehall until 1887, then joined the publishers Rivington and Co. as a partner, later moving to Cassell & Company as chief editor.

In 1894 he became an assistant commissioner for secondary education and from 1898 until his death was professor of Italian language and literature at University College London.

[3] Moving on to other writers, Butler translated and edited the Memoirs of Baron de Marbot (1892),[3] some correspondence of Cavour (1894),[5] Select Essays of Sainte-Beuve (1895), the Memoirs of Baron Thiébault (1896), Friedrich Ratzel's The History of Mankind (1896), and Bismarck: the Man and the Statesman (1898), from Bismarck's Gedanken und Erinnerungen.

[3][4] He also wrote two chapters for the third volume of The Cambridge Modern History (1904), 'The Wars of Religion in France' and 'The End of the Italian Renaissance'.

[7] Butler's final work, completed just before his death, was The Forerunners of Dante (1910), a selection from early Italian poets.

[8] On 6 April 1875 Butler married Mary Caroline, a daughter of William Gilson Humphry, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields.