E. J. Pratt - Early Life

Early Life

EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Dove Pratt in Western Bay, Newfoundland, on February 4, 1882. He was brought up in a variety of Newfoundland communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony as a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Old Gang mines in Gunnerside - a village in North Yorkshire, England. In 1850’s he became a Methodist pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland and settled down with Fanny Knight, a daughter of Capt. William Chancey Knight. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations of all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who had firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a break when his father was gone on pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from her husband. “Fanny Pratt was easy-going and unpunctilious where John was careful and exacting, lenient and forbearing where he was strict and inflexible, soft hearted where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more comradely relationship with the children. Raised in a less rigoristic household than he, she was prepared to take her children for what they were, make allowances for their fallen natures, and generally overlook their innocent iniquities” E.J. Pratt's brother, Calvert Pratt, became a Canadian Senator.

E.J. Pratt graduated from St. John's, Newfoundland's Methodist College in 1901. Like his father he became a candidate for the Methodist ministry, in 1904, and served a three year probation before entering Victoria College of the University of Toronto. He studied psychology and theology, receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of Divinity in 1913.

Pratt married fellow Victoria College student Viola Whitney, herself a writer, in 1918, and they had one daughter, Claire Pratt, who also became a writer and poet.

Pratt was ordained as a minister, in 1913, and served as an Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario, until 1920. Also in 1913, he joined the University of Toronto as a Lecturer in psychology. As well, he continued to take classes, receiving his PhD in 1917.

Pratt was invited by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where he became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor in 1938. He taught English literature at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to the Editorial Board of the College magazine, Acta Victoriana. "As a professor, Pratt published a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those to four Shakespeare plays), and edited Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."