author
Marie L. Shedlock
1854–1935
A pioneering storyteller who helped turn oral storytelling into a serious art, she inspired teachers and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Her best-known book, The Art of the Story-Teller, grew out of years spent performing, teaching, and thinking deeply about how stories come alive when spoken aloud.
2 Audiobooks
The Art of Story-Telling
by Marie L. Shedlock
The Art of the Story-Teller
by Marie L. Shedlock
About the author
Born in Boulogne, France, to English parents, Marie L. Shedlock became one of the early champions of storytelling as both an art and a tool for education. She began her working life as a teacher in England, and that experience shaped her lifelong interest in how stories could reach children more naturally and memorably than formal lessons alone.
She later built a reputation as a professional storyteller and lecturer, appearing in Britain and the United States at a time when oral storytelling was gaining new attention in schools and libraries. She was especially admired for the care she gave to performance and interpretation, treating storytelling as something crafted, disciplined, and deeply human.
Shedlock is remembered above all for The Art of the Story-Teller, a book that gathered her ideas on spoken narrative and helped define the practice for future teachers, librarians, and performers. Her work still stands as an early, thoughtful defense of storytelling as something more than entertainment: a way to share literature, imagination, and feeling from one person directly to another.