?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
AN ELUSIVE HARLEM RENAISSANCE LANDMARK (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) THURMAN, WALLACE, EDITOR. Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to Younger Negro Artists. Artwork throughout by Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce; 48 pages. 4to, original red and black stiff wrappers by Aaron Douglas; chip to the fore-edge of the yapped covers; spine with about one inch parted at the bottom, remaining firm an exceptional copy, signed by Thurman and other contributors. New York, [1926]
the rare first and only issue of this harlem renaissance literary landmark: signed by the editor, wallace thurman, as well as richard bruce nugent, zora neale hurston, aaron douglas, arna bontemps, helene Johnson and gwendolyn bennettIncludes a sub-section titled "Flame from the Dark Tower, a Selection of Poetry" by Countee Cullen, Edward Silvera, Langston Hughes, Helene Johnson and Waring Cuney. Also included is a play by Zora Neale Hurston, and numerous other contributions by the leading young voices of the Harlem Renaissance. "Fire," meant to be a quarterly, did not survive beyond this first number. The production of "Fire" was an expensive proposition; the high quality paper and printing alone would have made it difficult to see a profit. Thurman and the other editors were all supposed "kick in" for the cost of printing etc and would theoretically share in the profits later. As it turned out, Thurman who had borrowed money toward the printing expenses from the Harlem Community Church, and the Mutual League got mugged on his way home and even had his clothing stolen. We could not find an exact figure for the printing run, but it was probably under five hundred; and in a terrible stroke of irony, about three hundred copies were consumed by a fire in the basement of the building where Thurman and the others had stored them.
