Olivia Howard Dunbar

Olivia Howard Dunbar (1873-January 6, 1953)^[1] was an American short story writer, journalist and biographer, best known today for her ghost fiction.^[2]

Life

Dunbar was born in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1873. She graduated from Smith College in 1894,^[3] 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.^[4] 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.^[5] Dunbar was active in the women's suffrage movement, and her work has been noted to contain feminist themes.^[2] She married the poet Ridgely Torrence in 1914. Dunbar died in 1953. Her work has been anthologized by Dorothy Scarborough and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.^[2][6]

Selected works

Short fiction

• The Shell of Sense (1908)
• The Long Chamber (1914)

Novels

• A House in Chicago (1947)