Olivia Howard Dunbar (1873-January 6, 1953) was an American short story writer, journalist and biographer, best known today for her ghost fiction.
Life Dunbar was born in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1873. She graduated from Smith College in 1894, after which she worked in newspaper journalism. She worked for the New York World during which time she penned an exposé on Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. As a short story 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.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). (Reprinted from The Dial, June 1, 1905, p. 377-380.) Dunbar was active in the women's suffrage movement, and her work has been noted to contain feminist themes. She married the poet Ridgely Torrence in 1914. Dunbar died in 1953. Her work has been anthologized by Dorothy Scarborough and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Scare tactics : supernatural fiction by American women.New York : Fordham University Press, 2008. (p. 106).
Selected works
Short fiction The Shell of Sense (1908) The Long Chamber (1914)
Novels A House in Chicago (1947)
References
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
Olivia Howard Dunbar on eBooks at the University of Adelaide Olivia Howard Dunbar on Harper's Magazine's online archive