paper, he published his first poem at age 16 in the
Dayton Herald, and he edited and contributed to
the West Side News and the black journal Tattler,
two of the future aviator Orville Wright’s earliest
experiments. Dunbar’s popularity in school along
with his literary successes understandably, if na-
ively, led him to expect great professional rewards
after graduation in 1891. But after a failed search
for suitable employment and lacking the funds for
college, Dunbar resigned himself to working lo-
cally as an elevator operator—a job that afforded
him time to compose and submit poetry and short
stories to local periodicals.
On the strength of his early work, a former
teacher invited Dunbar to address the 1892 meet-
ing of the Western Association of Writers. His
masterful performance convinced the association
to grant him membership, and the poet James
Newton Matthews, who was in attendance at the
meeting, wrote a piece on the unknown black poet
that circulated widely throughout the Midwest.
Prominent midwestern newspapers were quick to
respond and invited Dunbar to submit his work
for publication to a wider audience. One year after
the Dayton speech, Dunbar published his debut
volume of poetry, Oak and Ivy (1893), a collection
of 56 poems that sold remarkably well. His abili-
ties as a public speaker only improved with time,
and after a successful publicity tour through Ohio
and Indiana, the elevator operator from Dayton
secured a devoted regional following.
In 1893, the Dayton Herald sent Dunbar on
assignment to the Chicago World’s Columbian
Exposition. There, Dunbar met and deeply im-
pressed FREDERICK DOUGLASS, who arranged for
the young poet to read “The Colored Soldiers”
on Negro American Day. In attendance were the
lawyer Charles A. Thatcher and the psychiatrist
Henry A. Tobey, who became lifelong supporters
of Dunbar’s career. Dunbar remained in Chicago
for a short period, hoping to take advantage of
the opportunities of the growing literary center.
Though he spent some time as Douglass’s secre-
tary, the only other jobs he could find in that city
were as a bathroom attendant and elevator opera-
tor. Disillusioned by Chicago’s racial intolerance,
he soon returned to Dayton, where, unable to sup-
port either his mother or himself, Dunbar began
to exhibit suicidal tendencies.
His self-esteem stabilized in 1895, however,
when he published, with financial support from
Thatcher and Tobey, his second collection of po-
etry, Majors and Minors (1895). This volume caught
the attention of the United States’s most influential
literary critic of the period, the “Dean of Ameri-
can Letters” William Dean Howells, whose review
in the June 20, 1896, edition of Harper’s Weekly
established Dunbar as a foremost American poet.
Subsequent sales allowed Dunbar to devote more
time to writing and touring the countryside.
Howells voiced a sentiment in his Harper’s
piece that would haunt Dunbar to his death. The
title Majors and Minors referred to his two poetic
forms. Whereas the “majors” are poems written in
standard English verse, the “minors” are written
in dialect. On this duality, Howells remarked that
the majors, aside from the fact that Dunbar was of
pure black ancestry, are “not... specially notable,”
but rather, “it is when we come to Mr. Dunbar’s
Minors that we feel ourselves in the presence of
a man with a direct and a fresh authority to do
the kind of thing he is doing.” Though the review
ensured popular success, Dunbar later admitted
that Howells’s good intentions consigned him to
the dustbin of dialect poetry. He submitted many
standard English poems to journals after Majors
and Minors, but editors continuously rejected
them and responded with calls for more “minors.”
In 1896 Dunbar signed with Major James Bur-
ton Pond’s lecture bureau, a management agency
that also boasted Frederick Douglass, George
Washington Cable, and Mark Twain. Pond ar-
ranged for Dunbar’s next and most highly ac-
claimed book, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), to be
published by Dodd, Mead and Company, one of
the most prominent American imprints, and in-
troduced with a tribute by Howells. After a na-
tional tour, Dunbar toured England, thus securing
an international audience as well.
Back in the United States, Dunbar landed first
in New York and then in Washington, D.C., where
he was offered a post at the Library of Congress. In
New York, he collaborated on a Broadway musical,
Clorindy; or, The Origin of the Cake Walk, with theDunbar, Paul Laurence 155