On July 20, 1900, a contract was signed at the New York firm of Dodd, Mead & Company to publish Paul Laurence Dunbar's third novel, The Fanatics.
The publishers shall pay to the Author on all such copies sold and subject to royalty, a Royalty of fifteen per cent of the published retail list price in cloth binding upon the first 10,000 copies sold, and seventeen and one half per cent upon all copies sold thereafter.
Contract for The Fanatics, July 20, 1900. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 2).
The Fanatics is a complex historical novel about how the Civil War divided families and separated lovers in Dorbury, Ohio (a fictitious town very similar to Dayton). Paul discussed the book in an interview with a Chicago newspaper.
I shall try a long story, and it will be about the "copperheads" of the north. My sympathies are very strongly with them. By that I do not mean that I believe as they did, or that I think they were in any way in the right. But they were acting conscientiously on what they believed to be the right. They were opposed to the war and they were not afraid to say so. They stood up for their belief and they suffered ostracism in many places and often bodily injury for it. I shall assume the point of view of the copperheads in writing. The field has not been touched upon and I think there is room. My sympathies are very strong in this case and I shall write what I feel.
"Dunbar to Write a Novel." The Daily News (Chicago, Illinois). September 14, 1899.
Northerners who were against the war were often described as "copperheads," a type of poisonous snake. Paul was in Florida when The Fanatics was released, but his wife Alice, in Washington, D. C., kept him informed about the reaction of critics, and her gynecologist.
Has the press begun to say anything about the Fanatics? I am very much afraid for it.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Alice Moore Dunbar, April 8, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Several clippings about The Fanatics have come in, all very favorable, and picking out that contraband chapter as the finest in the book. What good taste they all show! I feel to commend them, for so often they do not.
Alice Moore Dunbar to Paul Laurence Dunbar, April 21, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Dr. Parsons is reading the Fanatics. She told me to tell you that she wept over it one morning before breakfast, and she says it's agin her principle to cry on an empty stomach and she is therefore resentful, quite so.
Alice Moore Dunbar to Paul Laurence Dunbar, April 22, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
The "contraband chapter" that Alice mentioned is a heart-pounding account of how freedom seekers who had escaped their masters in the South found opposition instead of welcome in Ohio. The church rejected them, Northern Blacks were inhospitable, and white mobs attacked them.
From none of the states came a more pronounced refusal than from Ohio. She had set her face against men of color. They were bitterly disappointed. Was this the freedom for which they had toiled? Was this the welcome they received from a free state?
Excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Fanatics, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Published in 1901.
Critical response to The Fanatics was favorable, but sales were slow. Paul was disappointed with its lack of success, as he described in a letter to a friend.
I am glad to have you say nice things about The Fanatics. You do not know how my hopes were planted in that book and it has utterly disappointed me. Like that right wrist of yours, which I hope is better now, it went very lame upon me and, knowing it as the best thing I have done, discouragement has taken hold upon me.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Dr. F., September 20, 1901. "Unpublished Letters of Paul Laurence Dunbar to a Friend." The Crisis (New York, New York). June 1920. Page 74.
By the end of Paul's life, sales of The Fanatics were minimal, according to his publisher's semi-annual royalty statement from February 1906. During the previous six months, royalties for all of Paul's books totaled more than $950, but two editions of The Fanatics earned little more than a dollar.
Estate Paul L. Dunbar
In Account with Dodd, Mead & Company
1905/1906
Fanatics .23
Fanatics Ajax .96950.74
Statement from Dodd, Mead & Company, February 15, 1906. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 2).