Frederick Sefton Delmer

He was born in Battery Point, Tasmania, to James Delmer (1837–1914) and Margaret Sefton Burgess (1837–1886).

Delmer studied at Trinity College of the University of Melbourne and continued his studies in Europe where he made the acquaintance of Herman Grimm, son of Wilhelm Grimm.[1] After his return to Australia, he was a teacher in 1896, but also wrote travel reports. He soon returned to Europe where he became a lecturer at the University of Königsberg in 1900, and from 1901 to 1914 he was a lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. He married Isabella Mabel Hook (1879–1938) in 1901. They had a son, Sefton Delmer, and a daughter, Margaret Mabel Sefton Delmer (1905–1990).[2]

In 1910 he published the book English Literature from Beowulf to Bernard Shaw, which for decades became a standard work for English lessons at German schools.

He was interned in Berlin at the beginning of the First World War because he refused to accept German citizenship and was suspected of being a spy. In 1915 he was released. He was later active in Germany and Italy as a journalist, translator and interpreter.[3]

He died in Rapallo, Italy, on 7 April 1931.

• English debating exercises and spoken essays: an aid for English conversational courses, 1912
• English Literature from Beowulf to Bernard Shaw, Berlin 1910 (with many re-editions until at least 1984, in 1951 the 22nd edition was published under the title From Beowulf to TS Eliot, for the Use of Schools, Universities and private students, Twenty-second Edition with Alterations and New Chapters and Sections by HS Harcey, B. Litt.

• John Fletcher, Frederick Sefton Delmer, Sydney, 1991.