Born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised by his mother, Paul Dunbar stood out as the only black student in Central High School, the class poet, the editor of the school newspaper, and the president of its literary club, the Philomathean Society. After some years of menial work, and without having been able to study at college, Dunbar published his first book of verse, Oak and Ivy (1893) and met Frederick Douglass in Chicago, who helped bring him into literary circles. Five other volumes followed, Majors and Minors (1895), Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), Lyrics of the Hearthside and Poems of Cabin and Field (1899), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905). Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore in 1898 and lived with her at 1934 Fourth St., N. W., in Washington, D.C. He earned his living from stories, novels, essays, and lectures. After separating from his wife in 1902, Dunbar returned to his mother's home, 219 North Summit St., in Dayton, where he died from alcoholism and tuberculosis at 33 years. Joanne Braxton gives a brief life in her edition of Dunbar's Collected Poetry (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993; PS 1556 A1), and Peter Revell's Paul Laurence Dunbar a fuller one (Boston: Twayne, 1979; PS 1557 R4; both Robarts Library).