In the decade before 1925, black writers had tackled the literary theme of Harlem in poetry and short fiction, with little visibility beyond the periodicals of the black community. Non-blacks, even those who specialized in writing popular fiction and poetry about blacks, had ignored Harlem as a literary theme, but the commercial success of the Harlem issue of Survey Graphic and The New Negro, followed almost immediately by the best-seller status of Nigger Heaven, and later of Home to Harlem, demonstrated the popular appetite for images of Harlem. Harlem's currency and sensational status as a cultural symbol made it an inviting target for writers of all races, and, for nearly a decade after 1926, imaginative literature about black Harlem became inescapable. Many of the poets and short-story writers published in The New Negro attempted longer works of fiction; several new black novelists began to cultivate the interest in Harlem; and in less than a decade some twenty novels by African-American writers were published, most of them set, in whole or in part, in Harlem. Harlem episodes became a not uncommon feature of works concerned neither with Harlem nor with black life by a series of white novelists, and a cosmopolitan array of non-black poets began interpreting the implications of Harlem's vitality.