Paul Laurence Dunbar Autograph Manuscript Signed....

Description

Referred to by Frederick Douglass as "the most promising young colored man in America," by 1895 Dunbar's poetry was being published in national newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times. That same year his second collection of poems, Majors and Minors, was published. His poems in this book were written in standard English (called "majors") and in dialect (called "minors"). Although the "major" poems outnumbered those written in dialect, it was the dialect poems that brought Dunbar the most attention. Soon gaining international acclaim, Dunbar embarked on a six-month reading tour of England in 1897. When he returned to the United States, he received a clerkship at the Library of Congress. While living in Washington, D.C., Dunbar published a collection of short stories entitled Folks from Dixie (1898), a novel The Uncalled (1898) and two additional collections of poems, Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899) and Poems of Cabin and Field (1899). He left his position at the Library of Congress in December 1898 to spend his full time writing and giving readings. Over the next five years, he published three more novels and three short story collections. Between 1902 and his death in 1906 at the age of 33 as a result of tuberculosis, Dunbar produced three additional collections of poems, Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903), Howdy, Howdy, Howdy (1905), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1903), which cemented his reputation as America's premier African-American poet.