On the 150th anniversary of his birth, a definitive new biography of a
pivotal figure in American literary history
A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first
African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake
of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life
of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory
account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of
his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his
famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.
Jarrett tells the fascinating story of how Dunbar, born during
Reconstruction to formerly enslaved parents, excelled against all odds
to become an accomplished and versatile artist. A prolific and
successful poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and Broadway
librettist, he was also a friend of such luminaries as Frederick
Douglass and Orville and Wilbur Wright. But while audiences across the
United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar
privately bemoaned shouldering the burden of race and catering to
minstrel stereotypes to earn fame and money. Inspired by his parents'
survival of slavery, but also agitated by a turbulent public marriage,
beholden to influential benefactors, and helpless against his widely
reported bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism, he came to regard his
racial notoriety as a curse as well as a blessing before dying at the
age of only thirty-three.
Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and generously
illustrated, this biography presents the richest, most detailed, and
most nuanced portrait yet of Dunbar and his work, transforming how we
understand the astonishing life and times of a central figure in
American literary history.
