Robert Edwards Holloway: Newfoundland Educator, Scientist, Photographer, 1874–1904

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

Except for the entries in the multi-volume Dictionary of Canadian
Biography, few scholarly biographies exist of 19th- and 20th-century
personalities in Newfoundland and Labrador historiography. This is
partly due to the dearth of any substantive personal papers necessary
for a comprehensive biography. The lack of such archival sources is
evident in Robert Edwards Holloway, but the author has overcome this
limitation by examining the life and times of Holloway within the
academic development of an educational institution for which he was the
principal for 30 years. Holloway also wrote of his experiences in his
school magazine and had a book of photographs published posthumously
describing some of his summer excursion trips in Newfoundland. The
author has complemented this material with newspaper research and
government reports detailing the Methodist education system at the time.

The result is a highly readable and informative biography of the
English-born teacher who made a significant impact on late 19th-century
Newfoundland society. Some of his students, including future poet Edwin
J. Pratt and physicist William Boyle, went on to make important
contributions to Canada’s intellectual life. The 24-year-old Holloway
came to St. John’s in 1874 as principal of the Wesleyan Academy, later
named the Methodist College. Having been exposed to the eminent English
scientist Thomas Huxley, Holloway developed a strong science curriculum
at the College and popularized the study of science through numerous
public lectures. He studied the world’s latest discoveries and in the
late 1890s experimented with X-rays and their use by local doctors.

Holloway also developed a strong interest in photography in the 1890s,
and his legacy here forms an important visual history of late
19th-century life. The photos interspersed throughout this book portray
human activities in both urban and rural landscapes.