A Peculiar Parish Edition by Paul Laurence Dunbar
12 pages

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Somehow it don’t seem to me
Christmas like it used to be

A little snowfall, toys for the kids, and winter fun amongst good friends—what more could anyone want from Christmas? Written against the backdrop of a rapidly industrializing America, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Speakin’ O’ Christmas” paints a rosy picture of holiday merriment at odds with the reality of the season’s growing commercialization.

Your first read may put you into a festive spirit. Return to the poem again, though, and its seemingly simple message may conjure more complexity and a desire to delve deeper into the works of one of the twentieth century’s finest poets.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American writer of poetry, prose, and plays. Born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio to formerly enslaved parents from Kentucky, Dunbar was a poet from a young age. He published his first verses at sixteen in the Dayton Herald. Two years later, in 1890, he wrote and edited The Tattler, a short-lived weekly newspaper financed by a pair of high-school acquaintances, Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Dunbar self-published his first book, Oak and Ivy, in 1893, selling it to passengers at his job as an elevator operator. Consisting of a mix of traditional and dialect verse, the book caught the attention of prominent critics and helped propel Dunbar’s brief and brilliant literary career. He went on to write nearly twenty more books, a musical, and a play, as well as the lyrics to In Dahomey, the first Broadway production written and performed by African Americans.

Tuberculosis marked the final years of this prolific and influential writer’s life, claiming him at the age of thirty-three. The poem presented here was first published posthumously, in 1914.

* PRE-ORDER: Please note that this item is a pre-order. Any items ordered together with it will not ship until October 2026. *