The English Library of the University of Toronto presents information on Canadian poet Edwin John Pratt (1882-?). The library offers biographical information on Pratt, the full text of several of Pratt's poems, and a bibliography of his works.

This work is a result of the fourth symposium in the University of Ottawa Symposia series following those on Canadian writers Grove (1973), Klein (1974), and Lampman (1975). Scholars, friends, and readers gathered on May 1-2, 1976, to discuss "Ned Pratt", otherwise known as E.J. Pratt (1883-1964), the man and the poet. The two day event featured a biographical panel led by Fred Cogswell and various papers intended to establish the literary identity of the distinguished Canadian author. Other contributors include Glenn Clever, Elizabeth Brewster, Ralph Gustafson, Carl F. Klinck, Germaine Warkentin, Peter Stevens, Peter Buitenhuis, Sandra Djwa, Peter Hunt, Agnes Nyland, Robert Gibbs, Louis K. MacKendrick, and Lila Laakso.

The volume offers a full sampling of Pratt's poems chosen both for their representativeness and for their intrinsic value.

E.J. Pratt was the premier Canadian poet of the first half of the 20th century. He was an author of 13 volumes of poetry and one of Canada's most prominent literary figures by the 1940s. Newfoundland Verse, published in 1923, was one of his first poetic collections.

"Poetry is the foundation of E.J. Pratt's eminence in Canadian literary history, yet there exists a significant body of his work which has not been widely available until now. Pratt was a prolific writer of prose and an important commentator on the literature and life of his day." "Pratt had a varied career as a theological student, psychology scholar, and professor of English. As editor of Canadian Poetry he fostered poets like Earle Birney and Dorothy Livesay, and the editorials he wrote while at the helm of the magazine are important documents of Canadian literary history. His prose records both his dislike of modernism's 'obscurantist excesses' and his sympathy with its anti-romanticism. In his writing he was equally impatient with naive optimism and unrelieved pessimism, seeking a mean when he argued that 'messages of hope and faith need to be run through the bulletins of realism.'" "In Pursuits Amateur and Academic Susan Gingell has gathered together stories, essays, editorials, reviews, prefaces, introductions, and lectures, some of them previously unpublished. This volume not only enhances our understanding of Pratt's poetry, but gives us considerable insight into both the rich dimensions of Pratt's life outside poetry and the cultural and intellectual life of his times."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved