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, and has been revived several times and recorded on CD. This was followed by a story, "Santal" (1921), that describes an Arab boy's search for God. In his next novel, 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 Prancing Nigger at the suggestion of the American publisher but first 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 Cardinal Pirelli christening a dog in his cathedral ("And thus being cleansed and purified, I do call thee 'Crack'!") and ends with his 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 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 1990 in a single volume edited by Steven Moore, and his Complete Plays in 1991, with The Princess Zoubaroff, The Mauve Tower and A Disciple from the Country. Ronald Firbank left among his manuscripts the first few chapters of a novel set in New York, The New Rythum (sic). These were published in 1962 after a sale of many of his manuscripts and letters. Critical reception British author Richard Blake Brown was described as a "Firbankian" novelist due to the similar style in his writing. However, in 1951, Brown wrote that he grows weary of the claimed influence of Firbank's writing on his own. Playwright Joe Orton was also an admirer of Firbank's works, calling