Paul Laurence Dunbar

Oak and Ivy (1892), by Paul Laurence Dunbar (poetry)

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 - February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began to write stories and verse when still a child and was president of his high school's literary society. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper. Much of Dunbar's more popular work in his lifetime was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South, though he wrote in several dialects, including German and the Midwestern regional dialect of James Whitcomb Riley.[1] Dunbar's work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading editor associated with the Harper's Weekly, and Dunbar was one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. He wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy, In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway; the musical also toured in the United States and the United Kingdom.