Julian Augustus Selby (February 6, 1833 – April 12, 1907) was a printer, publisher and journalist in Columbia, South Carolina.

Aside from numerous newspaper articles, he wrote Memorabilia, a book of folksy reminiscences about the antebellum Columbia area.

He also wrote an anonymous booklet called A Checkered Life (later reprinted as The Countess Pourtales) inveighing against a former resident of Columbia, Marie Boozer.

[4][5] The newspaper often featured literary material, sometimes from Selby's friends William Gilmore Simms and the poet Henry Timrod.

At one point they had to display their weaponry (three Enfield rifles and several revolvers) to induce a ferryman to let them pass across a swollen river.

Selby retrieved it and created a wood model for the bed of the press that workers could cast into metal form.

[11] Economic conditions were so dire that his staff accepted "food staples such as bacon, eggs, rice, and potatoes as payment in lieu of cash subscriptions.

Simms wrote a series of articles for the first ten issues of The Phoenix detailing the suffering of Columbia during brief occupation by Sherman's army.

[13] In June 1865, Selby went to New York City with his wife and 6-year-old son Julian Peers to obtain printing materials.

[17] He knew the New York well since he mentions seeing the Metropolitan Museum,[18] Sing-Sing Prison,[19] Greenwood Cemetery[17] and the area later called the Tenderloin.

Selby wrote an anonymous booklet called A Checkered Life in 1878 criticizing Marie Boozer, a former resident of Columbia.

[23] When The State newspaper was founded in 1891 to oppose Governor Benjamin Tillman, the first press operation was run in the basement of the old city hall by Selby.

[26] In the prologue he explained that the book was presenting events in an anecdotal salmagundi, like a large plated salad of many disparate ingredients.

One of the female enslaved servants at the boarding house took him there; the law allowed her to go anywhere at anytime if accompanied by a white child.

The law still provided for public whippings; "the lashes were never laid on hard", but "it had the effect of getting rid of bad characters.

[36] At the end of Memorabilia, Selby reprinted William Gilmore Simms's articles on the suffering in Columbia during the Union occupation.

The booklet was a sustained, gossipy, vituperative attack on the reputation of Marie Boozer and her mother Amelia Feaster and contained "many false tales".

"[41] "Selby morphed an enchanting ocean passage into a salacious transatlantic sex romp with Marie, the captain, and a purser.

"[38][42] "Selby's twisted narrative continued with Marie traveling to the American West in the company of other "fast women".

"[43] The preposterous claim was that Boozer was abducted by Mormon women while passing through Salt Lake City, whipped until she agreed to polygamous marriage to an early LDS leader and his son, and rescued by U.S. Army troops alerted to her plight.

The Countess Pourtales was published anonymously since young Selby, Holmes and Snowden still feared the libel laws.

[53] Bennett told Snowden that "... apropos of the fair personage you so vilely style "a Columbia strumpet," the less you have to say on that subject, the better.

"[53] Selby and Snowden may have been motivated by the belief that Boozer and her mother were disloyal to the South and that the women did not conform to the expected standards of "southern womanhood".

Bancroft quoted Selby on the extent of slave trading in Columbia, which was a town of only about 8000 people around 1860 but was the commercial hub for the Midlands of South Carolina.