The Cream of the Jest

The Cream of the Jest (1923) is a novel by James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide, where a lowly pawnbroker can encounter monsters, gods, and devils, The Cream of the Jest is one work in a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel. Partly inspired by the obscenity trial surrounding his novel Jurgen, a Comedy of Justice, The Cream of the Jest is a metafictional blend of literary criticism and fantasy fiction about an author whose sudden fame shocks his sleepy hometown. To the people of Lichfield, Felix Kennaston is an unremarkable neighbor whose literary ambitions are pursued in secrecy and obscurity. While completing a fantasy novel, he discovers a strange talisman not unlike the one his hero Horvendile presented to his beloved Ettare. That night, Felix meets Ettare in a dream, inspiring him to rewrite the story's ending. When it is published, charges of obscenity threaten to sink his dreams before they can be realized. But critical attention has the opposite effect, making Kennaston a bestselling author overnight. Told from the perspective of Richard Harrowby, a neighbor from Lichfield, The Cream of the Jest is a fascinating blend of literary criticism and fantasy that poses important questions about the divide between fiction and the world we live in. Cabell's work has long been described as escapist, his novels and stories derided as fantastic and obsessive recreations of a world lost long ago. To read The Cream of the Jest, however, is to understand that the issues therein-the struggle for power, the unspoken distance between men and women-were vastly important not only at the time of its publication, but in our own, divisive world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of James Branch Cabell's The Cream of the Jest is a classic of fantasy and romance reimagined for modern readers.

Author: James Branch Cabell
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Mint Editions
Published: 08/03/2021
Series: Mint Editions--Humorous and Satirical Narratives
Pages: 150
Weight: 0.38lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.35d
ISBN: 9781513295787

About the Author
Cabell, James Branch: -

Frank J. Webb (1828-1894) was an African American novelist, poet, and essayist. Born in Philadelphia to a family of free Black people, Webb was the maternal grandson of former Vice President Aaron Burr. His parents settled in Philadelphia after fleeing the United States for several years in an attempt to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti. His father, who died only a year after his birth, was an elder in the First African Presbyterian Church, while his mother, the illegitimate daughter of Burr, came from a family of prominent activists. Webb found success as a commercial artist, marrying Mary Espartero--an actor and orator--in 1845. In 1857, he published his first and only novel, The Garies and Their Friends, with the help of Lady Noel Byron and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Two years later, while in Jamaica, Mary Webb succumbed to illness following a lengthy international tour. Webb eventually remarried, returning to the United States with Mary Rosabelle Rodgers in 1869. Settling in Washington, DC, Webb found work publishing essays, poems, and novellas in The New Era, a prominent African American literary journal run by Frederick Douglass. He spent the last decade of his life in Galveston, Texas, where he served as a delegate to the Republican state convention and worked as a newspaper editor and principal of the Barnes Institute.