Morris was born in
Madras,
British India, the fourteenth child of
John Carnac Morris, accountant-general of the
British East India Company at Madras, and his wife Rosanna Curtis (1803-1894). Morris was educated at
Rugby School and
Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1866, with final honors in classics, law, and modern history, and M.A. in 1869. He was an assistant master at
St Peter's College, Radley, and at
Haileybury, and in 1871 became headmaster of the
Bedfordshire middle-class public school. From 1875 to 1883 he was headmaster of the
Melbourne Church of England grammar school which made progress under his direction. During his period he established the prefect system in 1876 and started the first school journal and the first school library in
Melbourne. Morris resigned from Melbourne Grammar in March 1882 after financial difficulties hit the school; pupil numbers were in decline, partly due to the economic environment and partly to Morris's disciplinary measures. In November 1882 Morris was appointed
Hughes professor of
English at the
University of Adelaide. In 1883 Morris accepted an offer from the
University of Melbourne for the position of professor of modern languages and literature. Morris introduced courses in English,
French, and
German languages and literature. Morris took a prominent part in the management of the university; for several years he was president of the professorial board, and he was also 1876 elected to the council of
Trinity College. He had also many outside interests and he suggested that a branch of the
Charity Organization Society, of which he was the first president, was founded in Melbourne in 1887. The
Melbourne Shakespeare Society, for many years the most flourishing literary society in
Victoria, was also founded on his suggestion and was its inaugural president 1884–1888. Morris took the greatest interest in the Melbourne public library of which he was appointed a trustee in 1879. He became vice president of the trustees in 1896. 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.
Austral English has been praised for its basis on "historic" (
OED) principles, citing examples of use for each entry through time. It suffered, however, in ignoring street vocabulary, even highly current, inoffensive words such as "pub". ==Personal life==