“I didn't start as a dialect poet. I simply came to the conclusion that…” — Paul Laurence Dunbar

“I didn't start as a dialect poet. I simply came to the conclusion that I could write it as well, if not better, than anyone else I knew of, and that by doing so I should gain a hearing. I gained the hearing, and now they don't want me to write anything but dialect.”

Reflecting frustration at being typecast despite broader ambitions · Conversation with James Weldon Johnson

Paul Laurence Dunbar

About Paul Laurence Dunbar

27 June 1872–9 February 1906

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27 June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, and died there on 9 February 1906, only thirty-three years later. In that brief life he became one of the most accomplished and consequential American writers of his generation: a poet of extraordinary musical discipline, a novelist and short-story writer…

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