02540cam a2200301 i 4500 577340785 TxAuBib 20220810120000.0 210720s2022||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2021033992 9780691150529 HRD 35.00 0691150524 HRD 35.00 TxAuBib rda Jarrett, Gene Andrew, 1975-, author Paul Laurence Dunbar. Paul Laurence Dunbar [BOOK] : the life and times of a caged bird / Gene Andrew Jarrett. Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] xii, 544 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (pages 467-522) and index. A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the “poet laureate of his race” hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a “caged bird” that sings. Jarrett tells the fascinating story 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. But while audiences across the United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar privately bemoaned shouldering 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. Provided by publisher. 20220810. Dunbar, Paul Laurence 1872-1906. Poets, American 19th century Biography. African American poets Biography. Biographies.