Adolphe van Bever

Adolphe van Bever (25 December 1871, 12th arrondissement of Paris – 7 January 1927, Paris) was an 19th–20th-century French bibliographer and erudit.

Born in a poor family from Holland, he nevertheless one day discovered a passion for science and the rigorous methods of the Chartists. At eighteen, he became secretary of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, then from 1897 to 1912, he held the same position at the Mercure de France. He then devoted to his scholarly work. He also shared with his friend Paul Léautaud a passion for poetry that will lead them to publish jointly in 1900 their famous anthology Poètes d’aujourd'hui (1880-1900), reprinted many times.

Suffering from a painful disease of syphilitic origin, the tabes dorsalis, he overcame his physical miseries to concentrate on his work. Adolphe was primarily engaged in the critical edition of the satiric, libertine and gallant poets and writers, but also addressed, through a series of regional anthologies, oral folklore of the French provinces, in collaboration with Arnold van Gennep. He also played an important role by the publisher Georges Crès () in the collection "Maîtres du livre" in which he published critical editions of Verlaine, Baudelaire, Ronsard and Rousseau. He helped Léon Bloy publish Le Désespéré ("Despairing").

But when his name began to emerge, the tabes he suffered from was getting worse, and turned his life in martyrdom.

He died prematurely at the age of fifty-five, in his Paris home of rue de Tournon (), after having published nearly one hundred books. His eulogy holds entirely in the words spoken by Maurice Renard on his grave in the cemetery of Grosrouvre: "Be good and suffer. Work and suffer"

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