author
Charles Wesley Emerson
1837–1908
Best remembered as the founder and first president of what became Emerson College, he also spent years teaching and writing about the art of speaking well. His career joined ministry, education, and oratory in a way that helped shape Boston’s performance and communication scene.
3 Audiobooks
Evolution of Expression, Volume 2—Revised A Compilation of Selections Illustrating the Four Stages of Development in Art As Applied to Oratory; Twenty-Eighth Edition
by Charles Wesley Emerson
Evolution of Expression — Volume 1
by Charles Wesley Emerson
Psycho Vox; or, The Emerson System of Voice Culture
by Charles Wesley Emerson
About the author
Born in 1837, Charles Wesley Emerson became a Unitarian minister before turning his energy toward the study and teaching of speech and expression. Reliable sources on his life consistently describe him as a minister, educator, and author whose work centered on oratory.
In 1877, he enrolled in Boston University's School of Oratory, where he studied under Lewis B. Monroe. Just a few years later, in 1880, he founded the Boston Conservatory of Elocution and Dramatic Art, the school that later became Emerson College.
He is remembered today as the founder, namesake, and first president of Emerson College. For readers interested in the history of public speaking, performance, and education in America, his life offers a glimpse of a moment when eloquence was treated as both an art and a discipline.