Eric Colledge, the distinguished scholar of medieval mysticism, was born in Tynemouth in August 1910 and began studying English at the University of Liverpool in 1929. He graduated in 1932, completed his MA in 1935, and joined the university’s Department of English Language and Philology as assistant lecturer.

After wartime work with military intelligence, he returned to Liverpool in 1946 as Lecturer in English. He became Senior Lecturer in 1952 and Reader in 1961. In 1963 he resigned from the university and entered the order of Augustinian Friars at Clare Priory, Suffolk, where he assumed the religious name of Edmund. He was ordained as a priest in 1967.

He went on to hold a professorship at the Pontifical Institute in Toronto, before returning to England. He died in Deal, Kent in November 1999.