Series Descriptions for the Biography

I've taken a stab at describing the Biography in the series description (right column, top):

http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Biography+of+the+Life+of+Manuel

I lifted a passage from Parker's 1932 essay, "A Key to Cabell". Now, I find it fitting but I would appreciate others from this group reviewing, as perhaps it's overly literal and analytic rather than descriptive of the plot and style.

Also, I didn't add anything to the to Publication Order series: would it be more appropriate to add this description there, and then explain how Cabell revised it? And was this revision done for the Storisende edition?

To answer the last question first, no, the creation of "Biography order" for Cabell's works occurred some years before the Storisende revision of 1927-30. He'd been making connections between his various books almost from the beginning – as early as The Line of Love (1905) he linked his stories to each other using the idea that attitudes towards life and love reappeared in sequent generations of a family, and a similar thread links the stories in Chivalry (1909) where the ‘devil’s blood’ of old Foulke Plantagenet ran through various generations of his descendants. There were connections among his modern ‘Lichfield’ books too, but more in the line of characters reappearing in each other’s stories rather than sharing a marked bloodline. He took a step towards integration with Cream of the Jest where Felix Kennaston, a resident of modern Lichfield and author of medieval love stories not unlike Cabell’s, was drawn into the fantastic alternate-medieval world Cabell had written of in The Soul of Melicent. But it was not until Wilson Follett (yes, he of Modern English Usage) made some comments in a review in 1918 that the idea that all his works were one long 'biography' of mankind, and that the residents of Lichfield could be considered to be inhabited by the chivalry, gallantry and poetry of Poictesme, began to grow on Cabell.

At least as late as the second printing of Beyond Life (March 1919) the lists of "Mr Cabell's Books" on fly-leaves and dustjackets had been given in the order in which they were written, sometimes also sorted by genre. The first public presentation of the Biography order I am aware of is on the fly leaf of the first printing of Jurgen (September 1919) -- there it is just headed "Biography," no "of the Life of Manuel" yet -- although it is in Jurgen that Manuel makes his first appearance, in a passing reference, two years before Figures of Earth. (The first Manuel story/chapter, The Feathers of Olrun, appeared in Century Magazine in December,1919.) As Figures, High Place, Silver Stallion, Eve, and the Witch-Woman stories were published in the following years, they were duly fitted into the sequence.

By the way, the official Biography sequence changed several times, and the Storisende order is not even the final one. When the Storisende edition was first announced it was to contain not 18 but 19 volumes -- this can be seen, for example, in the advertising copy on the jacket flap of Something About Eve (1927). As initially conceived, Straws and Prayer-books was to be the 19th and final volume, bookending the series with its partner Beyond Life; the 17th and 18th volumes were to be a dizain of stories called The Witch-Woman, and a novel called Townsend of Lichfield about a modern writer with frank opinions on the current literary scene. But Cabell spent several years and much energy revising his already-written books and by the time he came to Witch-Woman and Townsend of Lichfield he had run out of steam. He dropped the Witch-Woman volume altogether and used the name Townsend of Lichfield for a mop-up volume placed after Straws and Prayer-books, which includes an essay called Townsend of Lichfield that explains how the novel Townsend of Lichfield was never written, and another essay on the unfinished Witch-Woman volume, that lists the dizain chapter-titles.

Among the 10 Witch-Woman stories he names are three that were finished, and had already been published individually in limited editions – The Music from Behind the Moon, The White Robe, and The Way of Ecben – and the latter two are among the ‘filler’ in the published Townsend volume. An odd thing though is that The Music from Behind the Moon was already appended to the Domnei volume in the original Storisende schema when The Witch-Woman was still a planned volume. Was it going to appear in both volumes? Presumably not -- I wonder how far he ever got with the Witch-Woman volume – perhaps some of the dizain titles are just that – titles -- and he borrowed Music from Behind the Moon just to fill out the list. It is noteworthy that one of them is called The Lean Hands of Volmar, and a Volmar is the central figure in one of the sections of Smith (1935; Vol 2 of the Nightmare has Triplets) -- so probably that one was at least sketched out and used later. (Cabell later ceded the Witch-Woman title The Thirty-first of February to Nelson Bond to use for his own story collection.) And perhaps the Townsend of Lichfield novel did not disappear entirely. I read in Kalki (the journal, but can’t put my finger on the reference right now) that Cabell had told someone that the essays on contemporary writers collected in Some of Us (1930) were in part left-over material from the unwritten Townsend of Lichfield novel. Perhaps this is why, although it was eventually banished to ‘Scholia’ in lists of Cabell’s books, Some of Us was in the 1930s and 40s included in long-lists of the Biography.

But wait! there’s more! As we know, The Witch-Woman volume was eventually published after all in 1948, now subtitled “A Trilogy About Her,” collecting revised texts of the three finished stories. Intriguingly, the jacket copy for this states “This volume inaugurates a series of reprints of Mr Cabell’s works, re-edited and re-introduced by the author. It will be followed by Around Litchfield (sic), an anthology.” Boy, wonder what that would have included had not John Farrar decided Cabell’s sales were too poor to proceed. And it was from this point that The Witch-Woman volume finally took its place in The Biography of the Life of Manuel – but instead of coming after Cream of the Jest as originally planned it was inserted into the sequence between Silver Stallion and Domnei. This order can be seen on the fly-leaf of the Witch-Woman volume and is also the order used by Frances Brewer in her 1957 Cabell bibliography and again by James N Hall in his 1974 bibliography. This of course causes a confusing displacement of numbering – when you look in these bibliographies all the Storisende volumes from Domnei on are off by one – Jurgen is Storisende number 6 but Biography number 7; The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck is Storisende number 15, but Biography number 16. etc etc.

If I were God (watch out!), I would revert to the old original never-used Biography/Storisende order. I would put Straws and Prayer-books at the very end (vol 19); I would make Witch-Woman vol 17 (right after Cream) and Townsend of Lichfield vol 18; and I would fill in the empty spots in Townsend – where White Robe and Ecben used to be before they were hijacked for the Witch-Woman volume – with the Some of Us Essays, bringing them back home. So there, er, ah, I mean Amen.

Sorry for the length of that previous post, but I've been meaning to write on that subject for a while and it just seemed to make sense to put it all in one place...since the question was asked...

As to the blurb from "A Key to Cabell" -- first, thanks for doing that at all; but while it doesn't seem 'wrong' it somehow doesn't seem adequate -- your description of it makes me suspect you might agree with this assessment...

Very much agree, but don't think I can manage it after reading just three of the series. I liked the pithiness of the Parker excerpt, but it does very little to entice new readers -- part of my motivation for completing it.

And I'll never look for nor request a shorter rather than lengthier post in this group. It's a chief reason for posting and reading here, first, rather than seeking info on Wikipedia or whatnot. In that vein: I'd like to help create a series for each of the various incarnations of the Biography, but don't have reference points. Are there any online I could use? Your "old original never-used" sequence is a great example!

I'm not sure it would be appropriate to use the Old Original order since it differs from subsequent orders mostly by including books which were never written -- the 10-story Witch-Woman and Townsend the Novel. But it might make sense to have distinct 'Storisende Order' and 'Biography of the Life of Manuel -- Final Order' lists.

Looking at the Publication Order series here I think we should add Some of Us (1930), Between Dawn and Sunrise (1930), Preface to the Past (1936) and The Witch-Woman: A Trilogy About Her (1948).