| James Branch Cabell |
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| 1879 births | |
| 1958 deaths | |
| american novelists | |
| virginia writers | |
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James Branch Cabell ( April 14 , 1879 - May 5 , 1958 ) was an American Author of Fantasy Fiction and Belles Lettres . Cabell's surname is often mispronounced "Ka-BELL", he himself pronounced it "CAB-ble". To remind an editor of the correct pronunciation, Cabell composed this rhyme (intended to be spoken, not read): ''"Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."'' Cabell was born in 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. He also wrote a short book, ''Taboo'', in which he thanks John H. Sumner and the Society for Suppresion of Vice for generating the publicity that gave his career a boost. Other works include ''Figures of Earth'', which tells a story of Manuel the swineherd, a scoundrel who raises to conquer a realm by playing on others' expectations - his motto ''Mundus Vult Decipi'' meaning "the world wishes to be deceived". ''The Silver Stallion'' is a loose sequel that deals with the creation of the legend of Manuel the Redeemer, in which Manuel is pictured as an infallible hero, an example to which all others should aspire; but some of the former knights of Manuel have not yet died, and remember how things really were. All of these books are part of '' The Biography Of Manuel '', the story in 18 volumes (or 20 or 22, depending on how works published both separately and jointly are counted) of Dom Manuel and his descendants through many generations. Cabell stated that he considered the ''Biography'' to be a single work, and supervised its publication in a single uniform edition, known as the ''Storisende Edition'', published from 1927 to 1930. Most of these books take place in a fictional country known as "Poictesme", pronounced "pwa-tem". It was the author's invention to situate Poictesme roughly in the south of France. After concluding the ''Biography'' in 1932, Cabell shortened his pen name to ''Branch Cabell''. The "truncated" name was used for all his new, "post-''Biography''" publications until the printing of ''There Were Two Pirates'' (1946). Cabell's work was thought of very highly by a number of his peers, including Mark Twain , Sinclair Lewis , H. L. Mencken , and Jack Woodford . And although now largely forgotten by the general public, his work was remarkably influential on later authors of fantastic fiction. Robert A. Heinlein was greatly inspired by his boldness, and originally described his famous book '' Stranger In A Strange Land '' as "a Cabellesque satire", and a later work '' Job, A Comedy Of Justice '' (with the title derived from ''Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice'') has an appearance of the Slavic god Koschei (who also appeared in ''Jurgen''). 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. Cabell was also a major influence on Neil Gaiman , acknowledged as such in the rear of Gaiman's novels '' Stardust '' and '' American Gods ''. This thematic and sylistic influence is highly evident in the multi-layered pantheons of Gaiman's most famous work,'' The Sandman '', which have many parallels in Cabell's work, particularly ''Jurgen''. There are also references to Cabell himself in the works of many other fantasy and science fiction authors. For example, the ''Leshy Circuit'' stories by Larry Niven feature planets and places whose names are taken from Cabell, and his protagonist in ''A World out of Time'' is named James Branch Corbell. H. Beam Piper also used names from Cabell for some of his invented planets. From 1969 through 1972 , the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series returned six of Cabell's novels to print, and elevated his profile in the fantasy genre. Today, many more of his works are available from Wildside Press . Though best known as a fantasist, the plots and characters of his first few novels, ''The Eagle's Shadow'' (1904), ''The Cords of Vanity'' (1909), and ''The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck'' (1915), do not wander out of the everyday, humdrum society of Virginia's beleaguered gentry. But Cabell's signature droll style is clearly in evidence, and in later printings each book would bear a characteristically Cabellian subtitle: ''A Comedy of Purse-Strings'', ''A Comedy of Shirking'', and ''A Comedy of Limitations'', respectively. His later novel, ''The First Gentleman of America: A Comedy of Conquest'' (1942) retells the strange career of an American Indian from the shores of the Potomac who sailed away with Spanish explorers, later to return, be made chief of his tribe, and kill all the Spaniards in the new Virginia settlement. Cabell delivered a more concise, historical treatment of the novel's events in ''The First Virginian'', part one of his 1947 work of non-fiction, ''Let Me Lie'', a book on the history of Virginia. Other works include:
At 22, Cabell taught Romance languages (French and Greek) at the College Of William And Mary . He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937. 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 after Cabell. QUOTATIONS
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