Frederick Sefton Delmer (24 October 1864 – 7 April 1931) was an Australian linguistics university lecturer and journalist.
Delmer was born in Battery Point, Tasmania, to James Delmer (1837–1914), a Master mariner,[1] and Margaret Sefton Burgess (1837–1886).
He studied at Trinity College of the University of Melbourne, graduating M. A.,[2] and continued his studies in Europe, where he made the acquaintance of Herman Grimm, son of Wilhelm Grimm.[3] 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 became a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II.[4] He married Isabella Mabel Hook (1879–1938) in 1901. They had a son, Sefton Delmer, and a daughter, Margaret Mabel Sefton Delmer (1905–1990).[5]
In 1910, he published the book English Literature from Beowulf to Bernard Shaw, which was, for decades, a standard work for English lessons in German schools.[6]
At the beginning of the First World War, he was held in the Ruhleben internment camp, with his family, because he refused to accept German citizenship and was suspected of being a spy. In 1917, he was deported to England as part of a prisoner exchange program.[7] He was later active in Germany and Italy as a journalist, translator and interpreter.[8]
He died in Rapallo, Italy, on 7 April 1931.