'James Branch Cabell' Vintage Book

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By Carl Van Doren. New York: The Literary Guild, 1932. Beautiful art nouveau new and revised edition. Small hardcover with … Read more By Carl Van Doren. New York: The Literary Guild, 1932. Beautiful art nouveau new and revised edition. Small hardcover with decorative boards. Title page has art nouveau border. 90pp. with two page map in center. Pages have deckled edges. Interior clean and tight. Very minor wear on spine edges.

"James Branch Cabell (April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare."[1][2]

Although escapist, Cabell's works are ironic and satirical. H. L. Mencken disputed Cabell's claim to romanticism and characterized him as "really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy heroes ... chase dragons precisely as stockbrockers play golf." Cabell saw art as an escape from life, but once the artist creates his ideal world, he finds that it is made up of the same elements that make the real one." Wikipedia See less