Delmer family aggregated collection of papers

fonds

1861-1991

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs, Clippings

9661440

35 boxes and 2 outsize items

Tasmanian-born F. S. (Frederic Sefton) Delmer (1864-1931) was a gifted linguist and teacher who lived in Europe from the turn of the century and left his mark on the instruction of English literature in Germany. He won a series of honours in Modern Languages at Melbourne University, but failed to graduate. A travelling scholarship to Europe in 1894 enabled him to pursue further study in Italy and Germany. Delmer's academic brilliance brought him to the attention of the German scholar Herman Grimm, who became his mentor. He returned to Australia in 1896 and became a schoolmaster at Yarrawonga, Victoria. From 1897 to 1899 Delmer was French Master at South Melbourne College, where he met on the staff his future wife, Isabella Mabel Hook. They married in London in 1901 and had two children, Denis (Tom) Sefton (1904-1979) and Margaret Mabel Sefton (1905-1990). In 1900 Delmer was appointed Lector in the English Department at the University of Konigsberg in East Prussia. Next year he was promoted to the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin. In 1905 he translated into English Gustav Frenssen's best-selling novel, Jorn Uhl. In 1910 Delmer's book, English Literature from Beowulf to Bernard Shaw, was published in Berlin, and is still in print.

The outbreak of World War I largely ended Delmer's academic career. He declined to apply for German naturalisation and as an alien, suspected of being a spy, was interned at Ruhleben. He boosted morale among the predominantly British internees, founding the camp's Literary and Debating Society. Released in 1915, teaching positions were blocked to him. In 1917 he was repatriated to England, then he returned to the Continent as a correspondent for the London Daily Mail. Isabella Mabel Delmer stayed in London working as an Examiner in the Postal Censorship at the War Office from 1917 to 1919.

In the early 1920s Delmer worked as an interpreter in German, French and Italian for the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control based in Berlin. At the same time his journalism flourished and his English textbooks went into multiple editions, including foreign translations. During the last decade of his life he settled in Italy. He lived in Rapallo, where he met and wrote about one of its illustrious denizens, the American writer Ezra Pound. Delmer's wife Isabella Mabel died in London in 1938; she was cremated and her ashes buried in Frederick's grave in Rapallo.

Margaret Mabel Sefton Delmer was born in Berlin and first came to Australia in 1909-1910 to visit her grandparents. She returned to settle here in 1936. In 1985 she donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales a stupendous collection of European master prints ranging from the 16th to the 19th century and German prints of early this century, which had been garnered by her father. In 1986 she donated to the State Library of New South Wales the first consignment of Delmer family papers, which she had previously allowed John Fletcher, then Lecturer in German at Sydney University, to consult for his biography of her father, published in 1991. In the same year John Fletcher passed on to the Library the present consignment, bequeathed by Margaret Delmer, which he chiefly arranged and jointly annotated with her.

COLLECTION 1:
Delmer family papers, 1892-1986, together with the MacDonald family papers, ca. 1900-1967

COLLECTION 2:
Delmer family further papers, 1861-1991

COLLECTION 3:
Delmer family further papers, 1919-1985