PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906)

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a poet, short story writer, novelist, writer of articles and dramatic sketches, plays, and lyrics for musical compositions. He is most noted for his highly skilled and graceful use of Afro-American themes and dialects. Born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of a slave, he went to Chicago in 1893 to work at the World's Columbian Exposition, for which he wrote The Columbian Ode" in commemoration. His overnight fame as a poet came after William Dean Howells reviewed Dunbar's volume of verse, Majors and Minors, published in 1895.

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson (1875-1935) was born and educated in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nelson became a poet and a pioneer in the black short story tradition, and devoted her later life to education, journalism and political and social activism. After her graduation from Straight College in New Orleans, Nelson taught in the public school system of that city until 1895, and began to submit poetry to the Boston Monthly Review. The young, struggling poet, Dunbar, took notice of one of these poems, along with an accompanying photograph of the poetess, and wrote to Nelson, then Alice Ruth Moore, raising literary issues. Thus became a lengthy series of correspondence in which they developed a friendship that led to their marriage in 1898 (they separated in 1902).

In reply to Dunbar's first letter, Nelson set forth her views on the literary use of "the Negro problem," stating that she did not think of her characters as "types of a race or an idea." In this letter she also mentioned the forthcoming publication of her first book, Violets and Other Tales (1895). In response, Dunbar wrote this second letter to his future wife, in which he argued that the characters of people, even in real life, cannot be disembodied from principles or ideas, and that "every character who moves across the pages of a story is to my mind-and a very humble mind it is-only an idea, incarnated." He also states that he will mention her forthcoming book in the column he edits. In this letter, Dunbar makes the first motion to move from the professional to the personal: "But let us not be literary in our letters, let us be friendly. I like it better don't you." He also says that he cannot include any verses with this letter, but welcomes the opportunity to do so in other letters. Indeed, in his fourth letter to Nelson, he included his poem "A Song," which he dedicated to her.

This letter, along with many other pieces of correspondence between the two writers, is part of the recently acquired Alice Monroe Dunbar Nelson Papers in the Manuscript Collection of the University of Delaware Library's Special Collections Department. The letters chronicle in detail their loving and intellectual relationship during the period 1895-1904, when Dunbar rose from obscurity to national fame. The Dunbar Nelson papers also comprise manuscript poems by Paul Dunbar, as well as a number of books from his personal library, extensive files of the working papers of Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson through 1930, her typescript manuscripts, photographs, journals and clippings.