1920. Also in 1913, he joined the University of Toronto as a lecturer in psychology. As well, he continued to take classes, receiving his PhD in 1917. Pratt was invited by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where he became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor in 1938. He taught English literature at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to the college literary journal, Acta Victoriana. "As a professor, Pratt published a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those to four Shakespeare plays), and edited Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)." Writing Pratt's first published poem was "A Poem on the May examinations," printed in Acta Victoriana in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he privately published a long poem, Rachel: A Sea Story of Newfoundland. He then spent two years working on a verse drama, Clay, which he ended by burning (except for one copy which Mrs. Pratt managed to save). It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released. It contains "A Fragment of a Story," the only piece of Clay that Pratt ever published, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic in diction, and reflects a pietistic and sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, characteristics that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is expressed in humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and in the creation of an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or Great War losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), is a central element as setting, subject, and creator of mood." With illustrations by Group of Seven member Frederick Varley, Newfoundland Verse proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime. "Recognition came with the narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered." "Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though specific references to it appear in relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But