The Line of Love (1913) is a collection of comic fantasy tales by
James Branch Cabell. Set in a world where history and fantasy collide,
where a lowly swineherd can rise to be Count of Poictesme, The Line of
Love is one of Cabell's best-known works of fiction, and is included in
a series of novels, essays, and poems known as the Biography of the
Life of Manuel."It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling
how love began between Florian de Puysange and Adelaide de la Forêt.
They tell also how young Florian had earlier fancied other women for one
reason or another; but that this, he knew, was the great love of his
life, and a love which would endure unchanged as long as his life
lasted." On the night of his wedding to the lovely Adelaide de la Forêt,
Florian de Puysange has a strange feeling that something is missing.
Stepping outside to gather his wits about him, he remembers his dear
friend Tiburce, dead for five years. At that moment, his comrade appears
before him, alive but with an alien tone to his voice. Recalling the
pact they made to drink in celebration of whomever married first,
Florian wanders into the garden to make good on his promise. Set in a
fictionalized France of the 13th century, The Line of Love is a
captivating collection of tales and legends from a mythical world not so
different from our own. Cabell's work has long been described as
escapist, his novels and stories derided as fantastic and obsessive
recreations of a world lost long ago. To read The Line of Love,
however, is to understand that the issues therein--the struggle for
power, the unspoken distance between men and women--were vastly
important not only at the time of its publication, but in our own,
divisive world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally
typeset manuscript, this edition of James Branch Cabell's The Line of
Love is a classic of fantasy and romance reimagined for modern readers.
