Number 1371 of 1550 copies available to the trade. Issued without jacket between 1927 and 1930 as Mr. Cabell completed the revision of his opus to conform with the wider scope of the Life of Manuel, described in the foreword of each volume in the set. Tight, clean, flat, square book. Lightly bumped corners. Top edge gilt, a bit dulled with age. These were issued with unopened pages, some pages may as yet be unopened but the vast majority of this set has been read. See pictures for other flaws.
Limited Edition of 1590 Sets Published from 1927-1930 as the author compiled and edited older works to fit the larger format of "Biography of the Life of Manuel." Publisher's Original Green Cloth with Blind Embossed Covers, Gilt Title/Author, Top Edges Gilt. Each Volume is Hand-Numbered, though not matching, as the sets were shipped throughout the course of three years. Each volume is [facsimile] signed by James Branch Cabell at the end of the author's introduction.
Ursula Le Guin spoke for me when she wrote of James Branch Cabell: "He mocks everything: not only his fantasy, but our reality. He doesn't believe in his dreamworld, but he doesn't believe in us, either. His tone is perfectly consistent: elegant, arrogant, ironic. Sometimes I enjoy it and sometimes it makes me want to scream..."
James Branch Cabell is an American treasure. "Domnei" is one of his best. A wry, ironic, sardonic and witty fantasy that explores the nature of woman's effect on men and on the meanings of "Love" and lust.
Domnei is an adult, wicked, and subversive story of the bitter feud between a knight, Perion, and evil Demetrios for the love of beautiful and pure Melicent. Read to see if you don't gain empathy for the urbane villain as the two men learn to respect each other as adversaries. Read to see if Melicent can survive the curse of being beautiful and wanted so badly and so tragically. Read to discover the many layers beneath the surface of the story.
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The Music from Behind the Moon has an ethereal quality, quite unlike almost all of Cabell’s other work.
Anyway, the mediocre poet, Madoc, needs a way somehow to recreate the sense of this music played on Ettarre’s heart strings. He is given “a very large quill pen fashioned out of a feather which had fallen from the black wings of Lucifer, the Father of All Lies” (p. 6). Thereafter, with songs written using this very special pen, Madoc’s fortunes change, and he becomes a respected and very successful poet through the few adventures he has in the middle portion of the story.