Jefferson P. Selth

Jefferson P. Selth (June 20, 1930-May 4, 1999) was a man of diverse interests - he had careers as both a Unitarian minister and academic librarian, was an international tennis umpire and was involved in amateur theatre, writing and publishing.

Born Geoffrey P. Selth in Adelaide, Australia, Mr. Selth graduated from Adelaide University in 1950 with first-class honors in French language and literature. He taught high school French at St. Peter's College in Adelaide before working at Adelaide Public Library in charge of Adelaide's youth lending services.

In the 1950's, Mr. Selth was internationally recognized as a tennis umpire, and eventually umpired all four Grand Slam events: Wimbledon, French Championships, Australian Championships and U.S. Championships. It was during his visit to New York in 1954 to umpire at the U.S. Championships at Forest Hills that he decided to one day move to the United States.

In 1959, Mr. Selth moved with his first wife and young son to Canada to work as a librarian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. In 1962, he emigrated to the United States on a student visa to study at the Starr King School for the Ministry, becoming a Unitarian minister while working as a librarian at the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Selth served as a full-time minister at Unitarian churches in Santa Rosa, California and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He became a U.S. citizen in 1972.

While still working as a minister part-time, Mr. Selth returned to the University of California as a librarian at the University of California at Riverside in 1973, where he was the bibliographer for the humanities and arts. A lifelong advocate for free speech and opponent of censorship, Mr. Selth founded the Southern California Coalition for Intellectual Freedom. It was while living in Riverside that Mr. Selth legally changed his first name from Geoffrey, which Americans often mispronounced, to Jefferson, after his hero, the third president. In 1980, Mr. Selth wrote a well-received musical play, Masquerade, based on two short stories by O Henry.

Mr. Selth took early retirement in 1991 to write full time, and formed a small publishing company, Dumont Press. He wrote books on a variety of topics, including Alternative Lifestyles (1985), Waiting, Dating and Mating (1990) and Ambition, Discrimination and Censorship in Libraries (1993). In 1997, after conducting research in Europe, he published his most successful book, a biography of Etienne Dumont, a Genevan political writer chiefly remembered as the French editor of the writings of the English philosopher and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham. Firm Heart and Capacious Mind: The Life and Friends of Etienne Dumont (1997) was published by University Press Of America.

With the assistance of his second wife, Barbara Craig, Mr. Selth also edited and published The Brave Wild Coast: A Year With Henry Miller (1997), written by the poet, Judson Crews, and The Heart's Precision: Judson Crews and His Poetry (1994), by Wendell Anderson.