James Branch Cabell

Biography

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958), a native of Richmond, was a nationally popular writer known for his novel Jurgen (1919). His numerous other books include The Cream of the Jest (1917), Beyond Life (1919), Figures of Earth (1921), and The High Place (1923). He was from a distinguished Virginia family and wrote a collection of essays about the commonwealth.

See Work

ESSAYS / Summer 1930

Sanctuary in Porcelain

By James Branch Cabell

With Elinor Wylie the poet—I mean, with the poet who wrote in verse—I plan no traffic. I can find in her verses nothing very remarkable, but then that has for many years been my attitude toward everyone’s verses, all the long way from...

ESSAYS / Autumn 1931

Before Aesred

By James Branch Cabell

As I bend over the desk about my writing I am crouched before Aesred in something like an attitude of supplication: whensoever I look up from the typewriter keys, and over the top of my reading glasses so that I may quite clearly see my...