I posted about him yesterday..

Paul Laurence Dunbar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dunbar circa 1890
Born	June 27, 1872 Dayton, Ohio, United States
Died	February 9, 1906 (aged 33) Dayton, Ohio
Cause of death	Tuberculosis
Resting place	Woodland Cemetery Dayton, Ohio
Nationality	American
Occupation	Poet
Spouse(s)	Alice Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born inDayton, Ohio, to parents who had been slaves in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar started to write as 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 his more popular work in his lifetime was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South. His work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading critic associated with the Harper's Weekly, and Dunbar was one of the first African-American writers to establish a national 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.

Dunbar also wrote in conventional English in other poetry and novels; since the late 20th century, scholars have become more interested in these other works. Suffering from tuberculosis, Dunbar died at the age of 33.