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In 1919 Cabell published Beyond Life, a kind of formalist credo in which he first launched his lifelong attack on literary realism.

It's an imagined conversation between John Charteris, a successful author, and a young editor. They sit in a library lined with books categorized as unwritten masterpieces or intended editions--a wry commentary on the business of publishing by one of America's overlooked masters. The two discuss writers and writing, especially those who published in the early 20th century and the demands of the market.

Figures of Earth, subtitled "A Comedy of Appearances", follows the vicissitudes of Dom Manuel the Redeemer from his lowly swineherd origins through his unlikely elevation to the Count of Poictesme, and beyond. Published in 1921, it was the second volume of "The Biography of Manuel", Cabell's great work about an imaginary land that also managed to skewer the world of his upbringing as a Southern Gentleman of Virginia, and nearly everything else, besides!

Poor Manuel starts out life as a lowly swineherd, but rises to become the famous Dom Manuel, the legendary, even mythic, hero of many of Cabell's novels. He begins, like the simpleton in "Jack in the Beanstalk" and other folktales, by taking literally his mother's advice to "go out and make a figure in the world" - and makes Figures of clay.... But Manuel turns out to be a master of guile, a trickster hero, if you will. His guiding motto is: "The world wishes to be deceived.

The story of the Lords of the Silver Stallion of Manuel's court, after his death.

Tells the story of Dom Manuel's daughter Melicent, and of the disastrous struggle between her successive husbands Demetrios of Anatolia and Perion de la Forêt.

Originally published as "The Soul of Melicent". Other editiions include the novelette "The Music from Behind the Moon".

A middle-aged pawnbroker-poet is allowed to regain his youth for a year of amorous adventures in this compelling fantasy. Filled with strange beasts, alien gods, fabulous lands, beautiful ladies, and an aura of the supernatural, Cabel's allegory leads its hero through affairs with Guenevere and the Lady of the Lake as well as confrontations with God and the Devil.

The 1919 publication of Jurgen catapulted its author into a position as one of the most enigmatic and controversial literary figures of his era. Critical response ranged from lavish praise to violent denunciations, including attempts to have the novel banned for obscenity. Modern readers consider it a landmark in the history of American fantastic fiction and a successor to the traditions of Rabelais, Sterne, Swift, and Voltaire. Its gentle blend of comedy and irony in a fantastic setting has enchanted generations of readers.

A satirical sequel to theSleeping Beauty tales, depicting a marriage where the "happily ever after" coda has gone far awry.

American writer James Branch Cabell carved out a literary niche of his own with a body of work that combines fantasy, humor, and allegory. The novel Gallantry succeeds marvelously on all three levels. In terms of plot, it's a rollicking action-adventure quest story that fans of fiction set in the medieval era will relish. Thematically, it's a clever send-up of the very notion of gallantry and all of the harm wrought by this complex social code.

The adventures of Gerald Musgrave who swapping places with a Sylvan has many adventures on his way to mythic Antan where he is to be its ruler.

MUCH has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary writers; and Mr. Froser's Biography contains all it is necessary to know as to the facts of Kennaston's life. Yet most readers of the Biography, I think, must have felt that the great change in Kennaston no long while after he "came to forty year"-- this sudden, almost unparalleled, conversion of a talent for tolerable verse into the full-fledged genius of Men Who Loved Alison -- stays, after all, unexplained....

Hereinafter you have Kennaston's own explanation. I do not know but that in hunting down one enigma it raises a bevy; but it, at worst, tells from his standpoint honestly how this change came about. You are to remember that the tale is pieced together, in part from social knowledge of the man, and in part from the notes I made as to what Felix Kennaston in person told me, bit by bit, a year or two after events the tale commemorates. I had known the Kennastons for some while, with that continual shallow intimacy into which chance forces most country people with their near neighbors, before Kennaston ever spoke of -- as he called the thing -- the sigil. And, even then, it was as if with negligence he spoke, telling of what happened -- or had appeared to happen -- and answering my questions, with simply dumbfounding personal unconcern. It all seemed indescribably indecent: and I marveled no little, I can remember, as I took my notes....

Now I can understand it was just that his standard of values was no longer ours nor really human. You see -- it hardly matters through how dependable an agency -- Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance. But to tell of his thoughts, is to anticipate. Hereinafter you have them full measure and, such as it is, his story. You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff. For I commence at Storisende, in the world's youth, when the fourth Count Emmerick reigned in Poictesme, having not yet blundered into the disfavor of his papal cousin Adrian VII....

With such roundabout gambits alone can some of us approach -- as one fancy begets another, if you will -- to proud assurance that life is not a blind and aimless business; not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that we ourselves may (by-and-by) be strong and excellent and wise. Such, in any event, is the road that Kennaston took, and such the goal to which he was conducted. So, with that goal in view, I also begin where he began, and follow whither the dream led him. Meanwhile, I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.

Table of Contents:

• About The Cream of the Jest and James Branch Cabell: The Dream Talisman - (1971) - essay by Lin Carter
• Author's Note - (1929) - essay by James Branch Cabell
• The Cream of the Jest - (1917) - novel by James Branch Cabell
• The Lineage of Lichfield - (1922) - novella by James Branch Cabell