This image is the cover for the book The Jewel Merchants: A Comedy in One Act, Classics To Go

The Jewel Merchants: A Comedy in One Act, Classics To Go

Set in early sixteenth-century Tuscany, this short comedic romp from author James Branch Cabell explores the moral lassitude and selective ethics of a coterie of businessmen. It's a thoroughly entertaining look at a past culture that is sure to tickle readers' funny bones. (Google)

James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell; (April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles-lettres. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare." Although escapist, Cabell's works are ironic and satirical. Mencken disputed Cabell's claim to romanticism and characterized him as "really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy heroes ... chase dragons precisely as stockbrokers play golf." Cabell saw art as an escape from life, but found that, once the artist creates his ideal world, it is made up of the same elements that make the real one

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