Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was a British novelist.

Biography [link]

Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907. In 1909 he left Cambridge without completing a degree.

Living off his inheritance, he travelled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. He died of lung disease in Rome, aged 40.

Work [link]

He published his first book, the short story "Odette d'Antrevernes", in 1905 before going up to Cambridge. He then produced a series of novels, from The Artificial Princess (written in 1915, published posthumously in 1934) and Vainglory (1915, his longest work) to Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926, also posthumous).

Inclinations (1916) is set mainly in Greece, where the fifteen-year-old Mabel Collins is travelling with her chaperone, Miss O'Brookomore. Mabel elopes with an Italian conte, but the plot is of minor importance and the interest, as with all Firbank's work, lies in the dialogue. His next novel Caprice followed in 1917.

Valmouth (1918) is based on the lives of various people in a health resort on the West Coast of England; most of the inhabitants are centenarians, and some are older ("the last time I went to the play...was with Charles the Second and Louise de Querouaille, to see Betterton play Shylock.") The inconsequential plot is concerned with the attempts of two elderly ladies, Mrs Hurstpierpoint and Mrs Thoroughfare, to marry off the heir to Hare-Hatch House, Captain Dick Thoroughfare. Captain Thoroughfare, who is engaged to a black woman, Niri-Esther, is loved frantically by Thetis Tooke, a farmer's daughter, but prefers his 'chum', Jack Whorwood, to both of them. Meanwhile Mrs Yajnavalkya, a black masseuse, manages an alliance between the centenarian Lady Parvula de Panzoust and David Tooke, Thetis's brother. A musical comedy of 1958 by Sandy Wilson gave the novel some popularity in the 1960s. It has been revived several times and recorded on CD.

"Santal" (1921) describes an Arab boy's search for God.

In The Flower Beneath The Foot (1923), the setting is an imaginary country somewhere in the Balkans. The characters include the King and Queen, sundry high-born ladies about the Court, and the usual attendant chorus of priests and nuns.

Sorrow in Sunlight (1924), renamed at the suggestion of the American publisher Prancing Nigger but published in Britain under the author's original title, was especially successful in America. It is set in a Caribbean republic (compounded of Cuba and Haiti). A socially ambitious black family move from their rural home to the capital, and the story is concerned with their attempts, which prove mainly abortive, to 'get into society'.

Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926) begins with the Cardinal christening a dog in his cathedral ('And thus being cleansed and purified, I do call thee "Crack"!') and ends with His Eminence dying of a heart attack while chasing, naked, a choirboy around the aisles.

Firbank's play The Princess Zoubaroff (1920) has been compared to William Congreve, but is rarely produced. Dame Edith Evans, perhaps the greatest British actress of her time, played the title part in a radio production in 1964. The dialogue is highly characteristic: for example, Princess Zoubaroff says: "I am always disappointed with mountains. There are no mountains in the world as high as I would wish... They irritate me invariably. I should like to shake Switzerland."

Firbank's Complete Short Stories were published in a single volume in 1990 edited by Steven Moore, and his Complete Plays in 1991 in a volume containing The Princess Zoubaroff, The Mauve Tower and A Disciple from the Country.

Ronald Firbank left among his manuscripts the first few characteristic chapters of a novel set in New York, The New Rythum (sic), published in 1962 after a sale of many of his manuscripts and letters.

Critical reception [link]

His novels have been championed by many English novelists including E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Raven. The poet W. H. Auden praised him highly in a radio broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in June 1961 (the text of the broadcast was published in The Listener of 8 June 1961). Susan Sontag named his novels as part of "the canon of camp" in her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'".

In her 1973 critical biography, Prancing Novelist, Brigid Brophy examines Firbank's cult of Oscar Wilde.

Steven Moore records Firbank's critical reception up to 1995 in his Ronald Firbank: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Materials (Dalkey Archive Press, 1996).

References [link]

In Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Swimming Pool Library Firbank's work and life are central themes.

Bibliography [link]

• "The Fairies Wood" (story), 1904
• The Mauve Tower (play), 1904 (published posthumously)
• "Impression d'automne" (story), 1905
• "Odette d'Antrevernes" and "A Study in Temperament" (stories), 1905
• "Lady Appledore's Mésalliance: an artificial pastoral" (story), 1908
• A Disciple from the Country (one-act play)
• The Artificial Princess (novel), 1915 (published posthumously in 1934)
• Vainglory (novel), 1915
• Inclinations (novel), 1916
• Caprice (novel), 1917
• Valmouth (novel), 1919
• The Princess Zoubaroff (play), 1920
• "Santal" (story), 1921
• The Flower Beneath The Foot (novel), 1923
• Sorrow in Sunlight (novel, also known as Prancing Nigger), 1924
• Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (novel), 1926
• The New Rythum (novel fragment), 1926 (published posthumously in 1961)

Critical studies [link]

• Jocelyn Brooke, Ronald Firbank, London, Arthur Barker, 1951
• An essay in Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences, London, MacMillan, 1950
• Derek Parker, The Man with Red Nails: Ronald Firbank, in Books and Company, London, 1999
• Alan Hollinghurst, 'The shy, steely Ronald Firbank', edited version of the third of the 2006 Lord Northcliffe Lectures given at University College, London, October 2006, in Times Literary Supplement, November.
• Mervyn Horder (ed.), Ronald Firbank: memoirs and critiques, London, Duckworth, 1977.
• Miriam J. Benkovitz, Ronald Firbank: a Biography, London and New York, 1970.
• Brigid Brophy, Prancing Novelist: a Defence of Fiction in the Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank, London and New York, 1973.

Bibliographic studies [link]

• S. Moore, Ronald Firbank An Annotated Bibliography of Scondary Materials, 1905–1995 (1996)
• M.J. Benkovitz, A Bibliography Of Ronald Firbank Second Edition (1982)

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ronald Firbank

• Ronald Firbank on glbtq.com
• Ronald Firbank at Find a Grave
• TLS review at https://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2454703,00.html
• Sorrow in Sunlight text at https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700911.txt