Biography
Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of William and Lucy (Ellery) Channing. In 1807 he graduated from Harvard College, and began the practice of law in Boston, but devoted his attention chiefly to literature. From 1818-1819 he was the second editor of the North American Review after William Tudor (1779-1830), and remained a regular contributor through much of his life.
From 1819-1850 he taught at Harvard as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, the position held by John Quincy Adams from 1806-1809. (Joseph McKean had served as the second Boylston Professor.) His students included the noted authors and speakers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, Wendell Phillips, and Henry David Thoreau.
Channing married Henrietta Ellery in 1826 and died in Cambridge. A memorial volume of his lectures was published in 1856 with memoir by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Read more about this topic: Edward Tyrrel Channing
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