Theodore Besterman
| Theodore Besterman | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | November 22, 1904 |
| Died | November 10, 1976 |
| Occupation | Biographer, psychical researcher |
Theodore Deodatus Nathaniel Besterman (22 November 1904 – 10 November 1976) was a psychical researcher, bibliographer, biographer, and translator. In 1945 he became the first editor of the Journal of Documentation. From the 1950s he devoted himself to studies of the works of Voltaire.
Theodore Deodatus Nathaniel Besterman was born in 1904 in Łódź, Poland, but he moved to London in his youth. In 1925 he was elected chairman of the British Federation of Youth Movements. In the 1930s Besterman lectured at the London School of Librarianship, and edited and published many works of, and about, bibliography.
During World War II Besterman served in the British Royal Artillery and the Army Bureau of Current Affairs. Afterwards he worked for UNESCO, working on international approaches to bibliography.
In the 1950s Besterman began to concentrate on collecting, translating and publishing the writings of Voltaire, including much previously unpublished correspondence. This was to occupy him for the rest of his life. He lived at Voltaire's house in Geneva, where he founded the Institut et Musée Voltaire and published 107 volumes of Voltaire's letters and a series of books entitled "Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century". The Forum for Modern Language Studies called Besterman's edition of the correspondence "the greatest single piece of Voltairian scholarship for over a century.".
During the final years of his life, Besterman opened discussions with the University of Oxford. These culminated in his naming the university his residuary legatee and arranging for the posthumous transfer of his extensive collection of books and manuscripts, which included many collective editions, to an elegant room in the Taylor Institution (the university centre for modern languages), which has space for 9000 volumes. This was renamed the Voltaire Room. Following Besterman’s death on 10 November 1976, the Voltaire Foundation was vested permanently in the University of Oxford.
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