Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American writer who gained international recognition after emancipation. Gene Andrew Jarrett's biography provides a revelatory account of Dunbar's life, revealing his private struggles as a "caged bird" who felt like a burden of race and catered to minstrel stereotypes. Despite his success, Dunbar regarded his racial notoriety as a curse and a blessing before dying at the age of thirty-three. The biography offers a rich, detailed, and nuanced portrait of Dunbar and his work, transforming our understanding of his life and times.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 560 pages
Publication date: 17 October 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

A significant poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first African American writers to achieve international acclaim following emancipation. In this comprehensive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett presents a revealing account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" concealed the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his renowned poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.

Jarrett narrates the captivating tale of how Dunbar, born during Reconstruction to formerly enslaved parents, excelled against all odds to become an accomplished and versatile artist. A prolific and successful poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and Broadway librettist, he was also a friend of such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Orville and Wilbur Wright. However, while audiences across the United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar privately lamented the burden of race and catering to minstrel stereotypes to earn fame and money. Inspired by his parents' survival of slavery, but also agitated by a turbulent public marriage, beholden to influential benefactors, and helpless against his widely reported bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism, he came to regard his racial notoriety as a curse as well as a blessing before dying at the age of only thirty-three.

Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and generously illustrated, this biography presents the richest, most detailed, and most nuanced portrait yet of Dunbar and his work, transforming how we understand the astonishing life and times of a central figure in American literary history.

Weight: 528g
Dimension: 134 x 205 x 40 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691254760