Edward Ellis Morris was an English historian, headmaster and lexicographer who worked for most of his life in colonial Australia.Morris was born at Madras, India, the fourteenth child of John Carnac Morris, accountant-general of the British East India Company, and his wife Rosanna Curtis. Educated at Rugby School and Lincoln College, Oxford, he emigrated to Australia to take up the headmastership of the Melbourne Church of England grammar school.In 1883 Morris accepted an offer from the University of Melbourne for the position of professor of modern languages and literatures. He took a prominent part in the management of the university; for several years he was president of the professorial board, and he was also in 1876 elected to the council of Trinity College.Morris took a great interest in the Melbourne public library of which he was appointed a trustee in 1879. His "Memoirs of George Higinbotham" was published in 1895, and his most important work, his painstaking and valuable Austral English: A Dictionary Of Australasian Words, Phrases And Usages was published in 1898. For this, he was awarded a Litt. D. degree by the University of Melbourne.Morris died while on a visit to Europe on 1 January 1902.
