In 2016 she published her first two books, a biography of the Latin love poet
Catullus and a new translation of his poems. The biography, entitled ''Catullus' Bedspread
, received endorsements from Boris Johnson, Robert Harris and Tom Holland and was described as a "superb portrait" in The Sunday Times.'' Dunn's translation of one of Catullus' expletives resulted in a series of letters in
The Times Literary Supplement and an article in
The Times. In a 2016 article in
The Guardian Simon Schama included Dunn in his list of leading female historians. Dunn's 2019 dual biography of
Pliny the Elder and
Pliny the Younger,
In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, published as
The Shadow of Vesuvius in the US, was a
New York Times Editor's Choice, a
Waterstones Best History Book of 2019, and a Book of the Year in several publications. Dunn was interviewed ahead of its release by
The Sunday Times. Also in 2019, Dunn published an anthology of ancient stories in English translation,
Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome, for which she was interviewed by
Paul Ross on
TalkRadio. A month later, she released
Homer, part of a new "expert" series of
Ladybird books. In 2020, Dunn was awarded the
Classical Association Prize, which recognises efforts to bring the classics to public attention. Dunn's sixth book,
Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, a group biography of the classicists
Maurice Bowra,
E. R. Dodds and
Gilbert Murray, was published in March 2022. In
The Times, Laura Freeman wrote of Dunn's "gift for making the arcane accessible and the forbidding more friendly" and the book as being "a love letter to learning". It was described by Leo Robson in the
New Statesman as "Lucid, agile, juicy, nuanced". It was listed as a book of the year by Waterstones,
The Independent, and
The Daily Telegraph, and longlisted for the
Runciman Award. In 2024, Dunn published
The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World through the Women who Shaped It, a
New Yorker best book of the year. Lyta Gold for the
New York Times noted that Dunn illuminated familiar stories like those of Caesar and Cato or Caesar and Brutus, by centering women like
Servilia, who was Caesar's long-term girlfriend, Cato's half sister and Brutus's mother. The book was also longlisted for the Runciman Award. ==Journalism and broadcasting==