James Branch Cabell (1 book)

James Branch Cabell (April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres.
Cabell was born and lived most of his life in Richmond, Virginia; though he wintered in Florida until the death of his first wife in 1949, and eventually retired there.
Cabell was born into an affluent and well-connected Virginian family. While 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: "Tell the rabble my name is Cabell." His father, Robert Gamble Cabell II (1847–1922), was a physician, and his mother, Anne Harris (1859–1915), was the daughter of Col. and Mrs James R. Branch. Cabell's paternal great-grandfather, William H. Cabell, was governor of Virginia from 1805 to 1808. Cabell was the oldest of three boys — his brothers were Robert Gamble Cabell III (1881–1968) and John Lottier Cabell (1883–1946). His parents separated and were later divorced in 1907.
He matriculated to the College of William and Mary in 1894 at the age of fifteen and graduated in 1898. While an undergraduate, Cabell taught French and Greek at the College. According to his close friend and fellow author Ellen Glasgow, Cabell developed a friendship with a professor at the college which was considered by some to be "too intimate" and as a result Cabell was dismissed, although he was subsequently readmitted and finished his degree.[2]
He worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newspaper reporter in New York City, but returned to Richmond in 1901, where he worked several months on the staff of the Richmond News.
1901 was an eventful year for Cabell: his first stories were accepted for publication, and he was suspected of the murder of John Scott, a wealthy Richmonder. It was rumored that Scott was "involved" with Cabell's mother. Cabell's supposed involvement in the Scott murder and his college "scandal" were both mentioned in Ellen Glasgow's posthumously published (1954) autobiography The Woman Within.
In 1902, seven of his first stories appeared in national magazines and over the next decade he wrote many short stories and articles, contributing to nationally published magazines including Harper's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as carrying out extensive research on his family's genealogy.
Between 1911 and 1913, he was employed by his uncle in the office of the Branch coalmines in West Virginia. On November 8, 1913, he married Priscilla Bradley Shepherd, a widow with five children by her previous marriage. In 1915 a son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell, was born. Priscilla died in March 1949; Cabell remarried in June 1950 to Margaret Waller Freeman.
During his life, Cabell published fifty-two books, including novels, genealogy, collections of short stories, poetry, and miscellanea. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937. Today, the modern languages house and an endowed law professorship at the College of William and Mary are named in his honor.
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 "James Branch Cabell Library" in his honor. In the 1970s Cabell's library and personal papers were moved from his home on Monument Avenue to the James Branch Cabell Library. Consisting of some 3,000 volumes, the collection includes manuscripts, notebooks and scrapbooks, periodicals in which Cabell's essays, reviews and fiction were published, his correspondence with noted writers including H.L. Mencken, Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser, correspondence with family, friends, editors and publishers, newspaper clippings, photographs, periodicals, criticisms, printed material, publishers' agreements and statements of sales.
The VCU undergraduate literary journal at the university is named Poictesme after the fictional province in his novel Jurgen.