[1] Serle was born in Elsternwick, Victoria to English parents who had migrated as children[2] and for many years worked in a life assurance office before in November 1910 becoming chief clerk and accountant at the University of Melbourne.

[2] One son, Alan Geoffrey Serle, was selected as 1947 Victorian Rhodes scholar.

Serle's publications included an edition, with notes, of A Song to David and Other Poems by the 18th-century English poet, Christopher Smart; A Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse: Australia and New Zealand; An Australasian Anthology (with 'Furnley Maurice' and R. H. Croll); A selection of Poems by Furnley Maurice; Dictionary of Australian Biography; and A Primer of Collecting.

The Dictionary took more than twenty years to complete and contains more than one thousand biographies of prominent Australians or people closely connected with Australia.

Serle commented in the Preface: "I have endeavoured to make the book worthy of its subject.