February 15, 2004

Highly recommended tales: Author James Branch Cabell's work has been hard to find, and is difficult to classify -- was he primarily a humorist, a satirist ("For some occult reason ideas become far more revolting when they are very."), a writer of 'cult classics', or a fantasist?

Four of his works are now available online, for those who care to make or renew acquaintance with this unusual writer.

posted by beeswacky 20 years ago
  • JBC was my one of my father's 2 absolute favourite authors (the other, james joyce) and had at least doubles of most of his works (there were 45 diff titles), some of them being first editions. i had no idea they were hard to find or i wouldn't have given the duplicates to the goodwill when my dad passed away last summer. i kept the first editions and or one of each for myself tho'. i've seen jurgen and figures of earth in local bookstores tho', so someone's printing at least those two. i read both of those (from my dad's bookshelf) when i was in junior high and enjoyed them immensely. didn't always understand the irony and subtext but i loved the tumble of words and imagery. does anyone here think i should take them to a place that appraises old/unusual books...? there's a bookstore/library like that in my neighborhood...
  • Have them appraised, by all means, but you might also want to check online. To do so, try Googling "first edition [title]" of each book to get an approximate idea of value this way. Or you can look for "used booksellars"; two useful sites are here, for terms of descriptions of used books, and here for other links pertaining to sales. Good luck.
  • The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is a good place to look for information about our of print and first edition books, as is ABE books.
  • thanks beeswacky & jb - if they're valuable i'll eventually give them to a university library or something like that. i plan on reading as many of them as possible first tho'.