One of the best-known volumes by a fascinating and complex writer, the first important black poet in the American canon. Popular in the early twentieth century Dunbar is today the subject of revived interest. Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 - February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began to write stories and verse when still a child and was president of his high school's literary society. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper. William Dean Howells ( March 1, 1837 - May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters",