Writer, born in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then worked as a journalist and coal miner. With his first novel, The Eagle's Shadow (1904), he launched a prolific literary career, producing works ranging from historical short stories to Virginia genealogy. He was known chiefly for his polished romances set in a mythical French province, Poictesme (18 vols, 1913–29), intended as allegories of the modern world, and collectively called Biography of Manuel. The best known of the series, Jurgen (1919), was originally suppressed as being immoral. Highly admired by literary types in his day, his work failed to speak to later generations.
James Branch Cabell (April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell's surname is often mispronounced "Ka-BELL", he himself pronounced it "CAB-ble". To remind an editor of the correct pronunciation, Cabell composed this rhyme: "Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."
Life
Cabell lived most of his life in Richmond, Virginia.
At 22, Cabell taught Romance languages (French and Greek) at the College of William and Mary.
During his life, he published fifty-two books, including novels, genealogy, collections of short stories, poetry, and miscellanea.
Cabell died of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1970, Virginia Commonwealth University, also located in Richmond, named its main campus library after Cabell.
Works
Jurgen
Cabell's eighth book, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice, (1919) was the subject of a scandal shortly after its publication. The case went on for two years before Cabell and his publishers won: the "indecencies" were double entendres that also had a perfectly decent interpretation, though it appeared that what had actually offended the prosecution most was a joke about papal infallibility. Cabell took an author's revenge: the revised edition of 1926 included a previously "lost" passage in which the hero is placed on trial by the Philistines, with a large dung-beetle as the chief prosecutor.
Figures of Earth
Other works include Figures of Earth, which tells a story of Manuel the swineherd, a scoundrel who rises to conquer a realm by playing on others' expectations - his motto Mundus Vult Decipi meaning "the world wishes to be deceived".
The Silver Stallion
The Silver Stallion is a loose sequel to Figures of Earth that deals with the creation of the legend of Manuel the Redeemer, in which Manuel is pictured as an infallible hero, an example to which all others should aspire;
The rest of the Biography of Manuel
All of these books are part of The Biography of Manuel, the story in 18 volumes of Dom Manuel and his descendants through many generations. Cabell stated that he considered the Biography to be a single work, and supervised its publication in a single uniform edition, known as the Storisende Edition, published from 1927 to 1930.
Many of these books take place in a fictional country known as "Poictesme", pronounced "pwa-tem".
After concluding the Biography in 1932, Cabell shortened his pen name to Branch Cabell.
Influence
Cabell's work was thought of very highly by a number of his peers, including Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, H. When Twain died he was reading Cabell's Chivalry. Jack Vance's Dying Earth books show considerable stylistic resemblances to Cabell; Cabell was also a major influence on Neil Gaiman, acknowledged as such in the rear of Gaiman's novels Stardust and American Gods. This thematic and stylistic influence is highly evident in the multi-layered pantheons of Gaiman's most famous work,The Sandman, which have many parallels in Cabell's work, particularly Jurgen.
There are also references to Cabell himself in the works of many other fantasy and science fiction authors. For example, the Leshy Circuit stories by Larry Niven feature planets and places whose names are taken from Cabell, and his protagonist in A World out of Time is named Jerome Branch Corbell. Beam Piper also used names from Cabell for some of his invented planets.
From 1969 through 1972, the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series returned six of Cabell's novels to print, and elevated his profile in the fantasy genre.
Others
Though best known as a fantasist, the plots and characters of his first few novels, The Eagle's Shadow (1904), The Cords of Vanity (1909), and The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck (1915), do not wander out of the everyday, humdrum society of Virginia's beleaguered gentry. But Cabell's signature droll style is clearly in evidence, and in later printings each book would bear a characteristically Cabellian subtitle: A Comedy of Purse-Strings, A Comedy of Shirking, and A Comedy of Limitations, respectively. Cabell delivered a more concise, historical treatment of the novel's events in The First Virginian, part one of his 1947 work of non-fiction, Let Me Lie, a book on the history of Virginia.
Other works include:
The High Place Something about Eve The Cream of the Jest Domnei The Nightmare Has Triplets (trilogy comprising Smirt, Smith, and Smire) The King Was in His Counting House The Devil's Own Dear Son Anecdotia Americana (with introduction by J. Mortimer Hall)
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