Voltaire Molesworth

Who was Voltaire Molesworth?

Voltaire Molesworth was an Australian politician.

Born in Balmain to seaman James Molesworth and Elizabeth Ellen Vibert, his family travelled to the socialist New Australia settlement in Paraguay when he was an infant. He was a commercial traveller in Sydney before working with the Cumberland Times around 1911. He continued in journalism and married Ivy Vick in 1916, with whom he had three children. A member of the Labor Party, he was secretary of the Homebush branch, the Granville state electorate council and the Nepean federal electorate council. In 1915 he was elected to the district committee of the Australian Journalists Association, of which he was treasurer and president. Molesworth was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1920 as a Labor member for Cumberland, serving until 1925, when he became chief of staff of the Times, later becoming editor from 1927 to 1929. In 1925 he left the Labor Party and later joined the Nationalist Party. He was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1932 as a member of the United Australia Party and served until 1934. Molesworth died in Sydney.

Molesworth's son Voltaire Molesworth was a newspaperman and well-known writer of science fiction and horror in the 1940s and 1950s.