Who is paul Laurence dunbar?

Answer 1

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first black writers to gain wide readership and respect. He was born not long after the Civil War, in 1872, to former slaves and began writing poetry at the age of 6. At age 16 his poems were being published in newspapers, and at age 21 his first book of poetry was published. Only a few years later, he had started attracting attention from respected literary critics and national audiences. His work was published in the Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Weekly, popular mainstream periodicals of the time. He was known especially as a poet, but also wrote novels, short stories, essays, plays, and the lyrics for an all-black musical that toured the U.S. and England for four years. Dunbar wrote both in dialect and in formal English; his dialect poetry was more popular originally, but his formal poetry now receives the most attention. Dunbar died at the young age of 33 in 1906.