James Branch Cabell

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James Branch Cabell (1879 - 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction. His name is pronounced "CAB-ble". To remind an editor of the correct pronunciation, Cabell wrote this rhyme: "Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 3 References 4 Other websites

[change] Life

Cabell was born and lived most of his life in Richmond, Virginia. However, he spent the winters in Florida until the death of his first wife in 1949. He eventually retired in Florida.

Cabell was born into a wealthy and well-connected Virginian family. His father, Robert Gamble Cabell II (1847–1922), was a physician. His mother, Anne Harris (1859–1915), was the daughter of Col. and Mrs James R. Branch. Cabell's great-grandfather, William H. Cabell, was governor of Virginia from 1805 to 1808. Cabell was the oldest of three boys – his brothers were Robert Gamble Cabell III (1881–1968) and John Lottier Cabell (1883–1946). His parents separated and were later divorced in 1907.^[1]

He entered the College of William and Mary in 1894 at the age of fifteen and graduated in 1898. While an undergraduate, Cabell taught French and Greek at the College. According to his close friend and fellow author Ellen Glasgow, Cabell had a friendship with a professor at the college which some people thought was "too intimate". As a result Cabell was dismissed, although he was later readmitted and finished his degree.^[2]

He worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newpaper reporter in New York City. He returned to Richmond in 1901, where he worked several months on the staff of the Richmond News.^[1]

1901 was an eventful year for Cabell. His first stories were accepted for publication. He was also suspected of the murder of John Scott, a wealthy Richmonder. There was a rumor that Scott was "involved" with Cabell's mother.^[2]

In 1902, seven of his first stories appeared in national magazines. Over the ten years, he wrote many short stories and articles. These were published in well-known magazines including Harper's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.^[1]

Between 1911 and 1913, he worked for his uncle in the office of the Branch coal mines in West Virginia. On November 8, 1913, he married Priscilla Bradley Shepherd, a widow with five children by her previous marriage.^[1] In 1915 a son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell, was born. Priscilla died in March of 1949; Cabell remarried in June of 1950 to Margaret Waller Freeman.

During his life, Cabell published fifty-two books, including novels, genealogy, collections of short stories, poetry, and miscellanea. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937. Today, the modern languages house and an endowed law professorship at the College of William and Mary are named in his honor.

Cabell died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

In 1970, Virginia Commonwealth University, also located in Richmond, named its main campus library "James Branch Cabell Library" in his honor. In the 1970s Cabell's library and personal papers were moved from his home on Monument Avenue to the James Branch Cabell Library. The collection consists of some 3,000 volumes, manuscripts, notebooks and scrapbooks, periodicals, letters (including correspondence with noted writers such as H.L. Mencken, Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser), newspaper clippings, photographs, criticisms, printed material, publishers' agreements and statements of sales.^[3]

The VCU undergraduate literary journal at the university is named Poictesme after the fictional province in his novel Jurgen.

[change] Works

In his lifetime he published some fifty books, most now forgotten. His eighth book, Jurgen, (1919) was the one that caught public attention. The hero, Jurgen, goes on a journey through ever more fantastic realms, even to hell and heaven. Everywhere he goes, he winds up seducing the local women, even the Devil's wife.

The novel was denounced by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice; they attempted to bring a prosecution for obscenity. 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.

Other works include Figures of Earth, which introduces Manuel the Redeemer, who conquered a realm by playing on others' expectations. His motto is `Mundus Vult Decipi', meaning 'the world wishes to be deceived'. The Silver Stallion is a sequel that deals with the adventures of the knights in Manuel's company after his departure.

Though he is now mostly forgotten by the general public, his work was very influential on later authors of fantastic fiction: Robert Heinlein's Job, A comedy of Justice has an appearance of the Slavic god Koschei (from Jurgen), and Fritz Leiber's Swords of Lankhmar was also influenced by Jurgen. Jack Vance's Dying Earth books show considerable stylistic resemblances to Cabell; Cugel the Clever in those books bears a strong resemblance, not least in his opinion of himself, to Jurgen.

[change] References

[change] Other websites

James Branch Cabell

• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• James Branch Cabell Library (Virginia Commonwealth University)
• Poictesme, Virginia Commonwealth University's literary journal

Cabell works online

• Domnei (Litrix Reading Room)
• Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (University of Virginia)
• The Cream of The Jest (University of Wisconsin)
• Works by James Branch Cabell at Project Gutenberg

Bibliographies

• Chronology of James Branch Cabell's Published Works