Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Majors And Minors, Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar Books

Majors and Minors reflects the dual styles of Dunbar's poetry. The "major" poems were works written in standard English, while the "minor" poems were his dialect poems. However, it was the "minors" section which caught the attention of reviewer William Dean Howells, editor of Harper's Weekly. Howells' review of the book singled out and praised Dunbar's use of dialect, bringing national attention to those works to the detriment of his poetry in standard verse.