cover image James Branch Cabell and Richmond-In-Virginia

James Branch Cabell and Richmond-In-Virginia

Edgar MacDonald. University Press of Mississippi, $39.95 (373pp) ISBN 978-0-87805-622-4

Born in Richmond, Cabell (1879-1958) wrote several novels like The Cream of the Jest (1917) that satirized the social pretensions of his fellow Virginians, and achieved national recognition only after he published Jurgen (1919), a work of fiction set in the Middle Ages that was censored because of its sexual symbolism. Like his literary career, Cabell's personal life had its rough spots: he was suspected of murdering his mother's lover and he married twice, apparently for convenience. He maintained close friendships with such writers as Ellen Glasgow, H. L. Mencken and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. In this prodigiously researched and heavily footnoted study, MacDonald, a Cabell scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University, portrays his subject as both attracted to and repelled by Richmond's insular society--an ambivalence he expressed in his mannered novels, poetry, essays and autobiographical works. McDonald has compiled a wealth of information; unfortunately it is presented in a densely academic style. Illustrations not seen by PW . (June)