Frederick Sefton Delmer


Frederick Sefton Delmer born 24 October 1864 in Battery Point, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia was an Australian linguistics university lecturer and publicist.

Life

His parents were James Delmer and Margaret Sefton Burgess.
Delmer studied at the 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. 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 Koenigsberg in 1900, and from 1901 to 1914 he was a lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. He married Isabella Mabel Hook in 1901. They had a son, Sefton Delmer, and a daughter, Margaret Mabel Sefton Delmer.
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.
He died in Rapallo, Italy on 7 April 1931

Works