Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers Digitized

By Theresa Hessey, Digital Initiatives and Preservation Department

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

The papers of Wilmington author Alice Dunbar-Nelson have been popular among researchers for many years. In response, staff at the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press has digitized the collection and made publicly available Dunbar-Nelson’s correspondence, scrapbooks and record books. Included are Dunbar-Nelson’s correspondence with her husband, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, close friend Edwina Kruse and other family members.

Spanning from 1890 to 1929, the scrapbooks include news clippings and other materials including clippings of Dunbar-Nelson’s column “As in a Looking Glass,” and other writings from The Washington Eagle. The record books document books that Dunbar-Nelson had read between 1897 and 1932.

Scanning of the collection was partially sponsored by “In Her Own Right: A Century of Women’s Activism, 1820-1920,” a pilot project executed by members of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL), with funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities.