born April 14, 1879, Richmond, Va., U.S.
died May 5, 1958, Richmond
U.S. writer.
Cabell attacked American orthodoxies and institutions in his best-known novel, Jurgen (1919), a story replete with sexual symbolism. His other works, many of them allegories set in an imaginary medieval province, include The Cream of the Jest (1917) and The High Place (1923). Though much praised in the 1920s, his mannered style and skeptical view of human experience soon lost favour.