Ernest Crawley was the son of Rev. Samuel Crawley, rector of Oddington Oxfordshire, and the brother of the Olympic lawn tennis player Walter Crawley. He was educated at Sedbergh School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Crawley was a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Sociological Society. He contributed to the 'Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics'. He died 21 October 1924 in Kensington. Theodore Deodatus Nathaniel Besterman was born in 1904 in 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. 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began to concentrate on collecting, translating and publishing the writings of 'Voltaire', including much previously unpublished correspondence.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.During the final years of his life, Besterman opened discussions with the University of Oxford.