author
Charles Wesley Emerson
1837–1908
A minister, teacher, and founder of what became Emerson College, he helped turn the study of speaking and performance into a serious field of education in Boston. His life joined religion, public speaking, and reform-minded teaching in a way that still feels distinctly American.
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 Vermont in 1837, Charles Wesley Emerson began preaching while still a young man and went on to serve as a minister before devoting himself more fully to education. He studied oratory in Boston and developed a strong interest in how speech, expression, and physical presence could be taught rather than treated as gifts that only a few people possessed.
In 1880 he founded the Boston Conservatory of Elocution, Oratory, and Dramatic Art, the school that later became Emerson College, and he served as its first president. His work helped shape the college’s early identity around eloquence, performance, and practical training in communication.
Emerson was also an author whose books dealt with oratory and related subjects. He died in 1908, but his name remains closely tied to the institution he built and to a broader belief that effective speaking could be a powerful tool for education, culture, and public life.