Biography of the Life of Manuel

Biography of the Life of Manuel is a series of novels, essays and poetry by James Branch Cabell. It purports to trace the life, illusions and disillusions of Dom Manuel, Count of Poictesme (a fictional province of France), and of his physical and spiritual descendants through many generations.

The conceit of the series is that the life (or at least the expectations) of Dom Manuel 'the Redeemer', which is the subject of the novel Figures of Earth, did not end in his death but was continued in his heirs. The life of each follows the same pattern.

The comedy is always the same. In the first act, the hero imagines a place where happiness exists. In the second, he strives towards that goal. In the third, he comes up short, or what amounts to the same thing: he achieves his goal only to find that happiness lies a little further down the road.

The components of the Biography were written between 1901 and 1929; some of them were originally conceived before Cabell had thought of Manuel and had to be rewritten to a greater or lesser extent to enable them to fit into the sequence. Although the Biography is a mix of fantasies, historical romances, social satires, verse, plays, and essays, Cabell said that he considered it a single work.

A list of works comprising the Biography follows. These data are given for each title:

Related to the Biography are the following:

Some of Cabell's other books appear to have teasing references to the Biography. For example, the hero of Hamlet Had an Uncle (1927, B27) is the historical prince Horwendill, whose name suggests Manuel's nemesis, Horvendile.

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