Edward Tyrell Channing (12 December 1790-8 February 1856), educator and younger brother of the Reverend William Ellery Channing, was born in Newport, Rhode Island. He took a law degree from Harvard University but soon quit his practice to pursue literary endeavors. Channing edited the North American Review from 1818 to 1819, then accepted the post of Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. During thirty-two years there, he taught his students, including Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Thoreau, to write in a natural yet lucid style. He also moved away from classical theories of rhetoric towards more modern ones. His Lectures Read to the Seniors in Harvard College (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856), edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., contains the essence of his courses. He died in Cambridge.