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James Branch Cabell ( April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction.
James Branch Cabell was descended from a venerable Southern family; his great-grandfather was William H. Cabell was governor of Virginia from 1805-1808. Cabell was born in Richmond, Virginia on on 14 April 1879 and lived most of his life there. Cabell had two brothers; his parents separated during his teens and were divorced in 1907.
Cabell attended William and Mary College between 1893 and 1898, and taught courses in French and Greek while an undergraduate. He worked briefly at the Richmond Times as a copy-holder, then lived in New York City for two years (1899-1901), working for the New York Herald as a social reporter, and served for a time in the paper's Harlem office. In 1901 he returned to Richmond, where he worked for several months for the Richmond News.
Although there is little extant information about them, there were two notable incidents in Cabell's early life, both of which were mentioned in the memoirs of his close friend, author Ellen Glasgow (published posthumously in 1954). The first controversy, Glasgow claimed, took place while Cabell was studying at William and Mary College -- his friendship with a professor was considered 'too intimate', and as a result of the supposed scandal that ensued, the school expelled Cabell, although he was later readmitted and finished his degree.
The second controversy stemmed from alleged rumours that Cabell's mother was having an affair with a wealthy Richmonder, John Scott. According to Glasgow, when Scott was murdered in 1901, Cabell was suspected by some of his killing. Although he dismissed Glasgow's claims as "fiction", it is possible that he was obliquely referring to these rumours in his 1928 novel Domnei -- the hero, Perion, is an outlaw who has been wrongly accused of the murder of a king.
Over the next ten years he undertook genealogical research and wrote numerous short stories and articles, contributing to national magazines such as Harper's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. His first published work in a journal, a college paper, "The Comedies of William Congreve", appeared in the April 1901 edition of International. His first book, The Eagle's Shadow, was published in 1904 after first being serialised in the Saturday Evening Post.
Cabell worked in the office of his uncle's mining business in West Virginia in 1911-1912 and returned to Richmond in 1913, where he married Rebecca Priscilla Bradley Shepherd (1874-1949), a widow with five children from her previous marriage. They had one son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell (1915-1980), who was born with Down's Syndrome.
His work was slow to draw critical attention but by 1918 he had published ten major works and had begun to attract a following, and was praised widely by fellow writers. In an article published that year in the New York Evening Mail, H.L. Mencken described Cabell as "the only first-rate literary craftsman that the whole South can show."
On 14 January 1920, the New York State Society for the Prevention of Vice charged Cabell's publishing editor, Guy Holt , with violation of the anti-obscenity provisions of the New York State Penal Code by publishing Cabells' novel Jurgen. The case attracted a great deal of publicity, with fellow writers defending the artistry of the work and Cabell's right to publish it, and college students and others reading it because it had been banned. The obscenity trial began on 16 October 1922, and ended three days later with an acquittal of all charges. Presiding judge Charles C. Nott wrote in his decision that:
"...the most that can be said against the book is that certain passages therein may be considered suggestive in a veiled and subtle way of immorality, but such suggestions are delicately conveyed" and that because of Cabell's writing style ... it is doubtful if the book could be read or understood at all by more than a very limited number of readers."
Throughout the 1920s, Cabell continued to refine his style, a combination of satire, parody, eroticism, symbolism, allegory and fantasy, blended myths and legends from many lands and times and lacing them with complex word-games including puns and anagramsAnagrams is a anagram board game which is played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble or Upwords. At the beginning, all tiles are turned face-down. During the game, players take turns flipping tiles face up on the table. Creating Words When. Most of these works eventually became part of the eighteen volume collection entitled The Biography of the Life of Manuel. The last volume of the series was published in 1930.
Cabell was highly regarded by many prominent American authors of his time and he conducted an extensive correspondence with a wide circle of writers and friends, including Mencken, Joseph Hergesheimer , Burton Rascoe , Theodore DreiserCarl Van Vechten, 1933 Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser ( July 27, 1871 December 28, 1945) was an American naturalist author known for dealing with the gritty reality of life. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, into a strict German-American family. The po, Sinclair LewisSinclair Lewis ( February 7, 1885 January 10, 1951) was an American novelist and playwright. Born Harry Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. A dreamer, at age 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from, F. Scott FitzgeraldCarl Van Vechten, 1937 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald ( September 24, 1896- December 21, 1940), was a Jazz Age novelist. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century. The self-styled spoke, Carl Van Vechten, and fellow Richmonder and close friend Ellen Glasgow.
He served as editor of the Virginia War History Commission (1919-1926) and later joined Dreiser, Eugene O'Neil and others on the editorial board of the American Spectator (1932-1935). In 1937, Cabell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
While the controversy over Jurgen assured Cabell of an audience for most of the 1920s, interest in his books dropped sharply in 1930s and continued to decline thereafter. In 1932, he tried to break with his past and wrote under the name Branch Cabell. Over the next three decades he wrote and published nearly twenty more books, which were grouped in a series of trilogies. He returned to the name James Branch Cabell in 1947 with the publication of Let Me Lie, the first installment of his fifth and last trilogy, consisting largely of semi-autobiographical essays.
Cabell lived and worked most of his life at his home at 3201 Monument Avenue, Richmond. The family began to spend winters in St. Augustine, Florida after Cabell began to suffer from attacks of pneumonia in 1935. His wife died there from heart failure during the winter of 1949.
In 1950, he remarried to Margaret Waller Freeman (1893?-1983), whom he had known for many years. Cabell suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died at his home on 5 May 1958. He is commemorated by the library of the Virginia Commonwealth University which was named in his honour and which now houses an extensive collection of Cabell's papers.