205). Hughes was unfazed, confident in his tribute
to the real people whom he encountered and
whose lives he examined with genuine interest and
a keen gaze. Fine Clothes to the Jewstill stands as a
volume that is valuable for its sustained realism
and the insights that it provides about 1920s con-
ceptions of African-American identity and domes-
ticity, and the intraracial anxieties about notions of
the black primitive and the struggling underclass.
Bibliography
Chinitz, David. “Rejuvenation through Joy: Langston
Hughes, Primitivism, and Jazz.” American Literary
History9, no. 1 (spring 1997): 60–78.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography,edited
by Joseph McLaren. 1940, reprint, Columbia: Uni-
versity of Missouri Press, 2002.
Rampersad, Arnold. “Langston Hughes’s Fine Clothes to
the Jew.” Callaloo(winter 1986): 144–158.
Firbank, Arthur Annesley Ronald
(1886–1926)
A wealthy and eccentric London-born novelist
whose novel Sorrow in Sunlight(1924) was dis-
tributed in America with the title PRANCINGNIG-
GER.The work focused on a fictionalized Caribbean
empire and the social ambitions of its inhabitants.
Critics have hailed the book for its critique of
racism and its sympathetic portrait of the charac-
ters who endure a variety of social stresses, such as
illicit affairs and tragic heartbreak, and quests for
spiritual comfort in the face of personal loss.
CARLVAN VECHTENintroduced Firbanks’s
works to American audiences during the 1920s
and of these, Prancing Niggerwas the most popular
among white readers because of its racial themes.
GWENDOLYNBROOKS reviewed the work in the
June 1926 issue of OPPORTUNITY.
Bibliography
Benkovitz, Miriam J. A Bibliography of Ronald Firbank.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Brophy, Brigi. Prancing Novelist: A Defense of Fiction in
the Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald
Firbank.New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973.
Canning, Richard. “Notes Toward a Biography of Ronald
Firbank,” James White Review17, no. 4 (fall 2000):
5–13.
Clark, William Lane. “Degenerate Personality: Deviant
Sexuality and Race in Ronald Firbank’s Novels.” In
Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality,edited by
David Bergman. Amherst: University of Mas-
sachusetts Press, 1993. 134–155.
Potoker, Edward M. Ronald Firbank.New York: Columbia
University Press, 1969.Fire!!
The journal Fire!!represented the collective efforts
of leading writers and artists of the Harlem Renais-
sance era. The cofounders and contributors to the
magazine, which debuted in November 1926, were
responding to the call for African-American initia-
tives in the arts that LANGSTONHUGHEShad ar-
ticulated in his 1925 essay “The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain.” Hughes, AARONDOUGLAS,
ZORANEALEHURSTON, and BRUCENUGENTmet
in Harlem at the rooming house on West 136th
Street known as NIGGERATI MANORto prepare
the publication.
The founders, who located their editorial of-
fices at 314 West 138th Street, planned to produce
quarterly issues, “Devoted to the Younger Negro
Artists,” priced at $1. In New York the writer
Bruce Nugent was one of the supporters who
helped to disseminate the magazine throughout
the city. Hughes recalled that the unemployed Nu-
gent would walk through GREENWICH VILLAGE
collecting monies from the few bookstores that dis-
played and sold the magazine but that he would in-
evitably spend the profits before he returned to the
Fire!!offices. The magazine, which required $1,000
to produce and printed only one issue, was con-
ceived in part to establish a distinctive new voice
in African-American letters.
The premier issue included works by writers
already recognized and celebrated by Harlem Re-
naissance audiences. WALLACE THURMAN, who
provided the financial resources for the magazine
and spent some four years paying off the start-up
costs despite initial $50 pledges from the founders,
published “CORDELIA THECRUDE,” a story deemed
offensive by many readers because of its focus on a
teenage prostitute. GWENDOLYN BENNETT con-
tributed “WEDDINGDAY,” one of the two short
stories she published during her career. Zora Neale
Hurston published the play COLOR STRUCK: A160 Firbank, Arthur Annesley Ronald