James Branch Cabell

Author Information
James Branch Cabell's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    50 Books
  • First Book:
    June 1979
  • Latest Book:
    December 2017
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Book List in Order: 50 titles

  • Domnei

    This 1913 novel, set in the mythical kingdom of Poictesme, concerns an outlaw named Perion who falls in love with Lady Melicent, the sister of a prominent count.  When Perion is captured by the heathen warlord Domnei, Melicent sets out to win hi...

  • Something About Eve

    "Something About Eve, an entry in the Poictesme series, ""shows its non-hero feebly intending to gain promised glory awaiting in the land of 'Antan' but forever delayed on Mispec Moor (anagram: 'Compromise'), wearing literal rose-colored spectacles a...

  • Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship

    The word "domnei" refers to the ritualized devotion that knights were required to display toward their ladies in the medieval period. James Branch Cabell's novel of the same title explores the concept in a rich, meditative look at femme fatale Melice...

  • The Line Of Love

    This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefo...

  • The Line of Love: Dizain Des Mariages

  • The Cords Of Vanity

    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 an...

  • The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking

    American author James Branch Cabell developed into a well-known fantasy writer later in his literary career, but his early novels focused on documenting (and slyly commenting upon) the lives of the American aristocracy in the early twentieth century....

  • Figures of Earth

    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 w...

  • The Certain Hour

    Before rising in the ranks of the fantasy genre, American author James Branch Cabell used fiction as a way to grapple with his native country's past, present, and future, as well as with the conundrum of living as an artist in a capitalist society. T...



  • There Were Two Pirates

    His name was José Gasparilla, and he was the self-proclaimed King of Pirates. He terrorized the waters around Florida, demanding tribute from every merchant ship he encountered. Riches flowed into his tiny island kingdom...and yet he longed for ...

  • Straws And Prayer-Books

  • Beyond Life

    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 â€" a figurative story which comments on the pub...

  • The Eagle's Shadow

    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 do...

  • The First Gentleman Of America

  • The King Was In His Counting House

    _The King Was In His Counting House_ might best be described as history-as-fantasy. It is set in the Renaissance Italy of Jacobean tragedy rather than history, where every powerful nobleman is a Machiavellian fiend, plots abound, and virtue is in per...

  • Preface To The Past

  • Quiet, Please

  • The Rivet In Grandfather's Neck

    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 dev...

  • Smire

    "[Cabell's] most substantial post-Biography fantasy was "The Nightmare Has Triplets," a sequence comprising Smirt: An Urban Nightmare, Smith: A Sylvan Interlude, and Smire: An Acceptance in the Third Person. This explicitly emulates the logic and geo...



  • Smith

    "[Cabell's] most substantial post-Biography fantasy was "The Nightmare Has Triplets," a sequence comprising Smirt: An Urban Nightmare, Smith: A Sylvan Interlude, and Smire: An Acceptance in the Third Person. This explicitly emulates the logic and geo...

  • The Way Of Ecben

  • The Witch-Woman

    _The Witch Woman_ collects three fantastic novellas set in Poictesme, the imaginary medieval land featured in such Cabell classics as _Jurgen_ and _Figures of Earth,_ all dealing with the most central of Cabell themes, the elusive feminine ideal, her...

  • From The Hidden Way

    "James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) wrote many of the Twentieth Century's finest fantasies, including the controversial ""Jurgen,"" which was famously banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was only after the furor died down that...

  • Hamlet Had An Uncle

    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 ...

  • Smirt

    "[Cabell's] most substantial post-Biography fantasy was "The Nightmare Has Triplets," a sequence comprising Smirt: An Urban Nightmare, Smith: A Sylvan Interlude, and Smire: An Acceptance in the Third Person. This explicitly emulates the logic and geo...

  • These Restless Heads

    James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) wrote many of the Twentieth Century's finest fantasies, including the controversial Jurgen, which was famously banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was only after the furor died down that read...

  • The Devil's Own Dear Son

    "The Devil's Own Dear Son" is Cabell's final philsophical comedy, about a man who discovers that his father was a demon and goes to Hell for a disquieting family reunion. James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) wrote many of the Twentieth Century's finest fa...

  • The High Place

    "In the sulphurous The High Place, the amoral hero Florian enters the sleeping-beauty story and (unlike Jurgen with Helen) does not draw back at the sight of excessive beauty. Complications ensue: Beauty is realistically diminished during pregnan...

  • The Silver Stallion



  • Jurgen

    Jurgen--a middle-aged pawnbroker-poet from the land of Poictesme--is given the opportunity to regain his youth for a year. Jurgen takes full advantage, setting off on an amorous journey through increasingly fantastic realms--and even to heaven and he...

  • Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice.

  • Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

    Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is a 1919 fantasy book by James Branch Cabell - the eighth among some fifty-two books written by this author - which gained fame (or notoriety, in the view of some) shortly after its publication. The eponymous hero, who co...

  • Chivalry

    Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the seed of his very earliest literary work. Espec...

  • Figures of Earth

    Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances (1921) is a fantasy novel or ironic romance by James Branch Cabell, set in the imaginary French province of Poictesme during the first half of the 13th century. The book follows the earthly career of Dom Manu...

  • James Branch Cabell Combo #1

    This is an omnibus edition of three novels by James Branch Cabell (rhymes with rabble). These are adult fantasy novels that seemed shocking when they were first published in the early 20th century, but seem tame by today's standards. Still, the work ...

  • Gallantry

    " ...]'they ought to be.'" Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, Beyond Life, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is telling, a...

  • Jurgen

    Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is a fantasy novel by American writer James Branch Cabell, which gained fame (or notoriety) shortly after its publication in 1919. It is a humorous romp through a medieval cosmos, including a send-up of Arthurian legend, a...

  • The Line of Love; Dizain Des Mariages

    " ...]Republic, or the Family, or even snivelization itself, he is at liberty to disport himself pleasantly with his nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns, arranging them with the same free hand, the same innocent...

  • The Eagle's Shadow

    " ...] The second proof that this name must be the best of all possible names is that Margaret Hugonin bore it. And so the murder is out. You may suspect what you choose. I warn you in advance that I have no part whatever in her story; and if my admi...



  • The Line of Love

  • Taboo

    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 persecu...

  • Jurgen a Comedy of Justice

    This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them....

  • Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice

    Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is a fantasy novel by American writer James Branch Cabell, which gained fame (or notoriety) shortly after its publication in 1919. It is a humorous romp through a medieval cosmos, including a send-up of Arthurian legend, a...

  • James Branch Cabell, Best Novels

    James Branch Cabell (1879 â€" 1958) was 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 cultu...

  • Chivalry

    • / Fantasy
    • Buy Buy

    Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, that I have gathered together these stories to form the present little book, you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to your Serenity this trivial offering beca...

  • The Cream of the Jest

    • / Fantasy
    • Buy Buy

    James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. He worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newpaper reporter in New York City, but returned to Richmond in 1901, where he worked several months on the staff of the Ri...

  • Gallantry

    • / Fantasy
    • Buy Buy

    This 1907 novel is set during the reign of George II of England.  Against a backdrop of intrigue and betrayal, England and France fence for advantage through such intermediaries of flesh and blood as Lady Allonby and her daughter, Dorothy, the D...

  • The Jewel Merchants

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    GUIDO Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems You were more gracious you were more beautifully like your lovely name on the fortunate day that I first encountered you only six weeks ago and only yonder where the path crosses the highway Bu...

  • Joseph Hergesheimer

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available a...



  • The Soul of Melicent

    • / Fantasy
    • Buy Buy

    This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available a...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

James Branch Cabell has published 50 books.

James Branch Cabell does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, James Branch Cabell, Best Novels, was published in December 2017.

The first book by James Branch Cabell, Domnei, was published in June 1979.

No. James Branch Cabell does not write books in series.
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