George Enor Melvyn Shelburg was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 9, 1890. He spent a number of years living in Jerusalem in the early 1900s. He received a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of Chicago in 1927. Shelburg was an Instructor in the Department of French at the University of Saskatchewan from 1929 to 1935. After 1935, he went back to the United States and settled in Los Angeles. He died in Los Angeles, California on March 24, 1958.