Before coming to Australia, lecturer and historian Isaac Selby had migrated with his family to New Zealand in 1868. He was educated at Dunedin. He left Australia a number of times, returning to New Zealand to be married in 1885, and sailing to San Francisco in the late 1890s and again in 1904. In that year he was arrested for firing a revolver at the judge who had granted his wife a divorce.
In 1910 Selby was released from the asylum where he had been imprisoned, on the proviso that he return to Australia. In 1918 he formed the Old Cemetery and Soldiers' Memorial Union to save the old Melbourne cemetery. In 1920 he became a member of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. He also set up the Old Pioneers' Memorial Fund and lobbied for the erection of a statue of John Batman. In 1924 Selby published (via the Fund) The Old Pioneers' Memorial History of Melbourne. In 1935 he published The Old Pioneers' Memorial Almanac.
Selby was a part-time minister of the Church of Christ, Carlton, and from 1941 to 1942 was president of the Russian branch of the Australian Red Cross Society, Victoria. He participated in many public debates with religious scholars, and his lecturing and debating tours (consisting of performances with musicians, singers and photographic slides) continued until the 1950s.
