James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American writer of fantasy fiction and literary essays, closely tied to cultural life in Richmond, Virginia. He wrote in English during the first decades of the twentieth century, and his work reached its widest readership in the 1920s, when critics such as H. L. Mencken read and discussed him with real interest.

He came from a well-off Virginian family. He studied at the College of William and Mary, worked as a newspaper reporter in New York City from 1898 to 1900, and returned to Richmond in 1901, where his first stories were published. Over the following decade he wrote short stories and articles for national magazines. After his marriage in 1913 he worked for a time in his uncle's coal mines in West Virginia.

His style blends medieval romance with classical mythology in an imaginary world, Poictesme, placed roughly in the south of France. Beneath that escapist surface lies irony and satire aimed at the hypocrisy of the American South and the customs of his day. His best-known novel, Jurgen (1919), was the subject of an obscenity prosecution that brought him international fame and ended in victory for Cabell and his publisher. His largest achievement is the Biography of the Life of Manuel, a cycle of 25 works written over about twenty-three years. After finishing it in 1932 he shortened his professional name to Branch Cabell.

His reputation declined in the 1930s, partly because he did not leave his fantasy niche even as the Second World War began. Later he was recognised as a forerunner of American fantasy, and writers such as Neil Gaiman count him among their admirations. The library of Virginia Commonwealth University has carried his name since 1970.