Richard Slator Dunn, author and historian, was born 9 August 1928 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He completed his B. A. in 1950 at Harvard College, his M. A. from Princeton University in 1952, and received his Ph. D. in history from Princeton University in 1955. He joined Phi Beta Kappa in 1950. Upon retirement from his position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996, he was named the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor Emeritus of American History. He was married to Mary Maples Dunn; together they raised two daughters.
Academic career
Dunn began his teaching career at Princeton University in 1954, moving to University of Michigan in 1955, then joined the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he eventually became chair of the department. He founded and was the first director of the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, now called the , according to his biography at the Penn Archives.
Dunn is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 in 1972. The book outlines the development of slave society and the Planter class by examining "sugar production techniques, the vicious character of the slave trade, the problems of adapting English ways to the tropics, and the appalling mortality rates for both blacks and whites that made these colonies the richest, but in human terms the least successful, in English America." His book, A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Virginia and Jamaica, was published by Harvard University Press in 2014. The book earned Dunn the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2015. According to the book's companion website, Two Plantations, Dunn was able to utilize slave holder records to recreate the genealogies of "1,103 slaves who lived at Mesopotamia between 1762 and 1833, and the 973 slaves who lived at Mount Airy between 1808 and 1865. And he has reconstructed the lineages of slave families from both plantations through four or five generations." He and his wife were co-executive officers of the American Philosophical Society from 2002 to 2007.
Books
Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630-1717 ; paperback edition by W.W.Norton, 1971. The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689, Expanded 2d ed., 1559-1715 Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 The Papers of William Penn edited with Mary Maples Dunn, Richard Ryerson, Scott Wilds, Jean Soderlund, Marianne Wokeck, Craig Horle, Joy Wiltenburg, and Alison Hirsh Volume One, 1644-1679 Volume Two, 1680-1684 Volume Three, 1685-1700 Volume Four, 1701-1718 William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 1680-1684: A Documentary History, General Editor, with Mary Maples Dunn, ed. Jean R. Soderlund The World of William Penn, a volume of twenty essays edited with Mary Maples Dunn Special issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 112, no. 2, "Undergraduates as Historians: A Penn sylvania Sampler," Editor. Articles by five of his senior history honors majors at the University of Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania Album: Undergraduate Essays on the 250th Anniversary of the University of Pennsylvania, a volume of ten essays edited with Mark Frazier Lloyd The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, edited with Laetitia Yeandle and James Savage The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649: Abridged Edition, edited with Laetitia Yeandle A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Virginia and Jamaica
