James Branch Cabell: 54 books

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."

An American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his works were most popular. This collection includes an active table...

Published in 1921, this novel may be considered the first in the Poictesme series, for it is here that Cabell introduces his great hero, or anti-hero, Manuel the Redeemer. A rogue who begins in the mud but through sharp dealings rises to become the wealthy and illustrious Count of Poictesme, Manuel’s journey makes him a legend.

This 1916 collection of ten short stories based on the works of ten imaginary poets of different epochs contains "Balthazar's Daughter," which Cabell later turned into his only published play, The Jewel Merchants.  The collection also features two poems and a lengthy introduction. 

PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL “Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small, Such stars as proudly struggle one by one To heaven’s highest place, as Procyon, Antares, Naoes, Tejat and Nibal Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone So very soon;—whilst steadfast and...

Published in 1909, this collection of ten short stories is set in France of the Middle Ages and ostensibly comes from the pen of Nicolas de Caen, secretary to the Duke of Burgundy.  Though Cabell later shoehorned this volume into his Poictesme fantasy series, the stories are really historical romances.

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.

Published in 1919, and the subject of a notorious obscenity trial, Jurgen is the second in Cabell's Poictesme series, and is certainly the author's most famous novel.  Jurgen, an old pawnbroker magically granted a second youth, embarks through time and space on a series of sexual conquests while ostensibly searching for his missing wife. A tale of the tragedy of human nature.

This 1915 novel is set in Virginia in the waning years of the nineteenth century.  A marriage between an aristocratic Southern gentleman and the spoiled daughter of a businessman affords Cabell the opportunity, with lapidary grace and gently devastating irony, of skewering the chivalric illusions of the Old South.

This fantastic work of fiction is a conversation between an author named John Chateris, and a youthful editor. The two discuss books and editions, which are not yet written, in the setting of a library – a figurative story which comments on the publishing industry, done in a masterful way.

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.

This 1904 novel, set in the strange and distant days when Colonel Roosevelt first became president, tells of a disputed inheritance that shapes and misshapes the lives of two young people:  Billy Williams, a painter, and Margaret Hugonin, who does not desire wealth but has it thrust upon her.