Background
Best was born into a Protestant family in Derry and educated at Foyle College before working for a time in a bank.
Best was born into a Protestant family in Derry and educated at Foyle College before working for a time in a bank.
As a young man he went to Paris to study Old Irish, where he met Kuno Meyer and attended Henri d"Arbois de Jubainville"s lectures at the Collège de France.
On his return to Ireland he translated the latter"s Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais et la Mythologie Celtique into English and became Assistant Director at the National Library of Ireland in 1904. The couple had no children. From 1913 onwards he published his multi-volume Bibliography of Irish Philology and Manuscript Literature: Publications (1913–1941).
Best was director of the National Library from 1929 to 1940.
He was Senior Professor of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies from its establishment in 1940. He was elected president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1943 to 1946.
He served as chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission from 1948 to 1956 and was an honorary fellow of the Bibliographical Society of Ireland. He died at his home, 57 Upper Leeson Street, on 25 September 1959.
Joyce depicted Best in Ulysses as one of the characters in the National Library scene in Episode 9 Scylla and Charybdis.
Best was known to have disapproved of Joyce"s characterisation of him. According to Frank O"Connor, Best boasted that he was the only person in Dublin from whom Joyce never succeeded in borrowing money. Flann O"Brien affectionately satirised him alongside his fellow scholars Doctorate. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin in his poem Binchy and Bergin and Best.
The R. I. Best Memorial Lectures were established by the National Library in his honour.