Paul Lawrence Dunbar has been until recently an elevator-boy in
Dayton, Ohio. While engaged in the ups and downs of life in that
capacity he has cultivated his poetical talents so successfully that
his verse has found frequent admission into leading magazines. At last
a little collection of these verses reached William Dean Howells,
and Mr. Dunbar's star at once became ascendant. He is said to be a
full-blooded Negro, the son of slave-parents, and his best work is in
the dialect of his race. A volume of his poems is soon to be published
by Dodd, Mead & Co. and in an introduction to it Mr. Howells writes as
follows:
"What struck me in reading Mr. Dunbar's poetry was what had already
struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana, in Kentucky and Illinois. They
had felt as I felt, that however gifted his race had proven itself in
music, in oratory, in several other arts, here was the first instance
of an American Negro who had evinced innate literature. In my
criticism of his book I had alleged Dumas in France, and had forgotten
to allege the far greater Pushkin in Russia; but these were both
mulattoes who might have been supposed to derive their qualities from
white blood vastly more artistic than ours, and who were the creatures
of an environment more favorable to their literary development. So
far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar was the only man of pure African
blood and American civilization to feel the Negro life esthetically
and express it lyrically.
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