Baldwin, James (Arthur)

(born Aug. 2, 1924, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France) U.S.

essayist, novelist, and playwright. He grew up in poverty in the New York City district of Harlem and became a preacher while in his teens. After 1948 he lived alternately in France and the U.S. His semiautobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), regarded as his finest, was followed by the essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961); the novels Giovanni's Room (1956), a story of homosexual life, and Another Country (1962); the long polemical essay The Fire Next Time (1963), prophesying widespread racial violence; and the play Blues for Mister Charlie (produced 1964). His eloquence and passion on the subject of race made him for years perhaps the country's most prominent black writer.

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