In her University of BC Sedgewick Lecture for 1999, Sandra Djwa relates the life and times of two illustrious professors of English, who were among the most influential teachers in Canada's history. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Garnett Sedgewick and Roy Daniells shaped the way tens of thousands of students experienced literature.

Sedgewick, the first Head of UBC's English Department, was renowned for his reading Shakespeare's plays with such intensity that one could believe Falstaff orRosalind stood beside the lectern. Daniells was equally famous for his lectures on Milton, in which Milton's epic vision and baroque splendour became felt presences in the classroom - even at 9:30 a.m. on a rainy Vancouver day. In her discussion of the Earle Birney-Roy Daniells feud, Djwa sheds new light on that battle of titans.

Djwa also extends her research beyond the personalities of Sedgewick and Daniells to discuss how both men participated in the development of an ideal of the humanities in Canadian universities. Indeed, this lecture, complete with photos, is a contribution to the developing history of the Canadian university.

Professor Djwa is the author of E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision and a biography of F. R. Scott, The Politics of the Imagination (1987). She has edited Karl Klinck’s memoirs, Karl Klinck: Giving Canada a Literary History (1991). Her biography of Roy Daniells is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press, and she is now beginning a biography of P.K. Page.

Sandra Djwa's profile page