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Description area
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History
Samuel Ernest Sprott, known as Ernest or “Ern”, was born December 4th, 1919 in Hobart Tasmania, Australia to Moses and D. Florence (Harris) Sprott. He received his M.A. (1942) and B.D (1947) from the University of Melbourne, and went on to Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. in 1954. He was a lecturer at Barnard College at Columbia from 1947 to 1949 and an instructor at Brooklyn College during the summer of 1948. Sprott went on to McGill where he was an assistant professor from 1949 to 1954 in the department of English, and joined the Faculty of English at Dalhousie University in 1958.
While at Dalhousie he was a committee member of the Dalhousie Faculty Association (1963-1965), Faculty Council of the Faculty of Graduate Studies (1963-1965), Committee on Tenure, Salaries and Promotions, Department of English (1969-1973), Committee on Research Fund (Humanities, etc.), Graduate Studies (1969-1972), Selection Committee of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (1963-1964) and Canada Council (1966-1967) and Chairman of the Theatre Building Committee (1963-1965) and the Library Building Committee (1964-1965).
Sprott, a writer and lecturer, attended the weekly Distinguished Speakers Series of the English Department until his death. He was published in the Dalhousie Review, Philological Quarterly, Publications of the Modern language Association, as well as published books including Milton’s Art of Prosody (1953), The English Debate on Suicide from Donne to Hume (1961), John Milton: A Maske, the earlier versions (1973) and a book of poems titled Poems (1955). He was also a collector of Australian literature and donated his collection, the S.E. Sprott Australian Literature Collection, to the Killam Library at Dalhousie University in 1984.
On May 20th, 2009 Dr. Sprott died at his home, his final lecture “Shakespeare’s Hall Plays-A Fiftieth Anniversary Lecture” took place January 22, 2009.