Jessie Eldridge Southwick

She influenced oratory through active involvement in emerging organizations, writing textbooks, and teaching expressive voice culture and platform performance at Emerson College and elsewhere.

1893, who also taught at Emerson College and was head of the English department;[4][3] Mildred (Mrs. James E. Potter of Palm Springs, CA), 1895; and Jessie (Ross) 1897.

Starting as an assistant to the teacher in 1885, she became full-time faculty, teaching classes in Voice Culture, Dramatic Interpretation, Ethics, and Shakespeare.

[9] In "1900, Henry and Jessie Southwick had joined with William H. Kenney to purchase the school from Charles Emerson"[3] to become part owner of the college.

[11] Her appearances included schools and colleges such as Wellesley[12] and as far as Nebraska and Canada, with outstanding response: On Monday the citizens of Alberton enjoyed one of the choicest of literary treats, when Mrs Jessie Eldridge Southwick, the wife of the president of Emerson College of Oratory, Boston, interpreted Mackaye's historic and romantic drama, "Jeanne D'Arc."

Mrs. Southwick was unassisted by other talent; but so many and varied were the characters and the emotions depicted that the interspersing of musical numbers, etc, would have been not only inartistic, but superfluous.

Guardian, p 48)[13] Platform performances were considered literary events and not traditional theater and, as such, were often presented at club meetings, church halls, and for other private audiences.

"In the regular professional engagements of Mrs. Southwick she never appears for less than $150 and $200 one of the finest impersonators [elocutionist, reader, reciter, performer - each term used interchangeably for this art] in this country.