Edward Hartley Dewart

Edward Hartley Dewart(1828-1903) was a Canadian poet, teacher, clergyman, prose author, and editor.

Life
Dewart was born in Stradone, Ireland, and came to Canada with his parents in 1834. the family settling in Peteborough county, Upper Canada (now Ontario). He was educated at the Normal School in Toronto.

He then taught in Dunnville, and also began teaching at the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday school and lectured on behalf of the Sons of Temperance. After Methodist officials asked him to become a local preacher, Dewart spent four years on probation until in June 1855 being ordained in London into the Methodist church in June 1855.

He was elected president of the Ontario branch of the Dominion Alliance in 1869, and of the Toronto conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Canada in 1871.

Writing
His most noteworthy literary accomplishment was the 1864 anthology Selections from Canadian poets. In that book's introduction he lamented in his introduction the “coldness and indifference” with which Canadians regarded their own literature. He defined the Canadian cultural dilemma by pointing out “that the tendency to sectionalism and disintegration, which is the political weakness of Canada, meets no counterpoise in the literature of the country.”