Olivia Howard Dunbar
Olivia Howard Dunbar (1873–1953) was an American short story writer, journalist and biographer, best known today for her ghost fiction.[1]
Life
Dunbar was born in West Bridgeport, Massachusetts in 1873. She graduated from Smith College, after which she worked in newspaper journalism. As a short shory writer and critic, she was published in many of the popular periodicals of her time, including Harper's and The Dial. Dunbar wrote several ghost stories, as well as a 1905 essay, "The Decay of the Ghost in Fiction", defending the subgenre.[2] Dunbar was active in the women's suffrage movement, and her work has been noted to contain feminist themes.[1] She married the poet Ridgely Torrence in 1914. Dunbar died in 1953. Her work has been anthologized by Dorothy Scarborough and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.[1][3]
Selected works
Short fiction
- The Shell of Sense (1908)
- The Long Chamber (1914)
Novels
- A House in Chicago (1947)
References
- 1 2 3 Salmonson, Jessica Amanda (1989). What Did Miss Darrington See? : An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. ISBN 9781558610057.
- ↑ Olivia Howard Dunbar, "The Decay of the Ghost in Fiction". In Jason Colavito, ed.,A Hideous Bit of Morbidity: An Anthology of Horror Criticism from the Enlightenment to World War I. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. (pp. 330-336). ISBN 978-0786469093 (Reprinted from The Dial, June 1, 1905, p. 377-380.)
- ↑ Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Scare tactics : supernatural fiction by American women.New York : Fordham University Press, 2008. ISBN 0823229858 (p. 106).
Further reading
- The Shell of Sense: Collected Ghost Stories of Olivia Howard Dunbar (1997) edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
- What Did Miss Darrington See? (1989) edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
- The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917) by Dorothy Scarborough; available in its entirety at Google Book Search
External links
- Works by Olivia Howard Dunbar at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Olivia Howard Dunbar at Internet Archive
- Olivia Howard Dunbar on eBooks at the University of Adelaide
- Olivia Howard Dunbar on Harper's Magazine's online archive