17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new windowThe digital Burney Collection provides full text access to almost 1 million pages and approximately 1,270 newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817). The resource represents the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English and British colonial news media that helps chart the development of the concept of 'news' and 'newspapers' and the "free press".