James Branch Cabell
1) Chivalry
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Chivalry (1909) is a fascinating collection of tales that draw inspiration from the popular chronicles of medieval Europe. Author James Branch Cabell immerses his reader into this distant world, masking his authorship in order to ensure a fluidity of form and content that injects his work of high fantasy with a sense of truth.
Intentionally layered in mystery and claims of authenticity, Chivalry purports to be a copy made by royal scribe Colard Mansion...
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Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919) is a comic fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly pawnbroker can encounter monsters, gods, and devils, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is one of Cabell's best-known works of fiction. For several years after its initial publication, the novel was the subject of an obscenity trial pursued by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. In 1923, after winning...
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Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances (1921) is a comic fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly swineherd can rise to be Count of Poictesme, Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances is one of Cabell's best-known works of fiction, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. "They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when...
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This 1921 play, subtitled "A Comedy in One Act," is Cabell's only published play script. The drama is based on the short story "Balthazar's Daughter" that originally appeared in Cabell's 1916 collection, The Certain Hour. In his prologue, the author confesses that the play "lacks moral fervor" and hopes it will "corrupt no reader irretrievably."
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Taboo (1921) is a comic fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly pawnbroker can encounter monsters, gods, and devils. Cabell tells the story of Philistia, a country dedicated to the persecution of all manner of ill-defined vice and taboo. Bold and satirical, this thinly veiled critique of his own, high-minded critics is essential to understanding Cabell's vision of art. Cabell's work has...
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Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship (1920) is a comic fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly swineherd can rise to be Count of Poictesme, Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship is one of Cabell's best-known works of fiction, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. "Then Perion knew that vain regret had turned his brain, very certainly,...
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A Certain Hour (1922) is a collection of stories by James Branch Cabell. Recreating the lives of some of history's most celebrated poets, A Certain Hour is a relative outlier among Cabell's body of work, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. "Indisputably the most striking defect of this modern American literature is the fact that the production of anything at all resembling literature...
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The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck (1921) is a comic romance novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world, where history and fantasy collide, where the laws of chivalry and honor continue to hold sway in postbellum South, The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel.
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The Eagle's Shadow (1904) is the debut novel of James Branch Cabell, a master of fantasy fiction and an underrated figure of twentieth-century American literature. The novel is significant for being among few of Cabell's works to take place both around the time of its publication and to be set in the contemporary world. Like many of his works, however, it paints an intricate portrait of romance and power, immersing its reader into a fiction more real...
10) Jurgen
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A middle-aged pawnbroker-poet is allowed to regain his youth for a year of amorous adventures in this compelling fantasy. Filled with strange beasts, alien gods, fabulous lands, beautiful ladies, and an aura of the supernatural, Cabel's allegory leads its hero through affairs with Guenevere and the Lady of the Lake as well as confrontations with God and the Devil. The 1919 publication of Jurgen catapulted its author into a position as one of the most...
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The Cords of Vanity (1920) is a comic romance novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where the laws of chivalry and honor continue to hold sway in postbellum South, The Cords of Vanity is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. A man of honor and tradition, Robert Townsend comes from a prominent family whose wealth and power once depended on its ownership...
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American writer James Branch Cabell carved out a literary niche of his own with a body of work that combines fantasy, humor, and allegory. The novel Gallantry succeeds marvelously on all three levels. In terms of plot, it's a rollicking action-adventure quest story that fans of fiction set in the medieval era will relish. Thematically, it's a clever send-up of the very notion of gallantry and all of the harm wrought by this complex social
...13) Gallantry
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Gallantry (1922) is a collection of comic fantasy tales by James Branch Cabell. Set in a fictionalized version of 18th-century England, Gallantry is a relative outlier among Cabell's body of work, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. "We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had, not yet ceased to hope for...
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The Cream of the Jest (1923) is a novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world, where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly pawnbroker can encounter monsters, gods, and devils, The Cream of the Jest is one work in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. Partly inspired by the obscenity trial surrounding his novel Jurgen, a Comedy of Justice, The Cream of the Jest is a metafictional blend of literary...
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This 1909 novel is narrated by Robert Etheridge Townsend, a young Southern writer recounting a life of wealth and leisure in the waning years of the nineteenth century. It is a gentle but not un-barbed satire of manners that skewers snobbery and convenience marriages.
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This short book, published in 1921, is Cabell's response to the publicity that attended the publication of his novel Jurgen, the subject of a notorious obscenity trial. Here, in his inimitable ironic style, he thanks those who sought to persecute him and, in doing so, launched his career to undreamed-of heights.
18) The Line of Love
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The Line of Love (1913) is a collection of comic fantasy tales by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly swineherd can rise to be Count of Poictesme, The Line of Love is one of Cabell's best-known works of fiction, and is included in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how love began between Florian de...
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Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor is a Shakespearean satire by James Branch Cabell, first published in 1940. Cabell had incubated a Shakespeare satire for decades, and based his tale on the Saxo Grammaticus, an epic saga that recounts the story of the mythic Hamlet.