Gallantry

James Branch Cabell's Gallantry is a glittering, ironic comedy of manners in which beauty, wit, and moral ambiguity move together like music. Louis Untermeyer's introduction presents Cabell as a poet disguised as a novelist, a maker of masks, parody, and elaborate literary games whose fiction forms one interconnected poetic vision rather than a set of separate stories. In Cabell's world, pity and irony soften judgment, and life becomes a pageant of desire, illusion, and stylized human striving. That sensibility shapes the book's own playful frame, where gallantry is defined as a polished, morally flexible art of living under the gaze of Mrs. Grundy. The story, set in 1750 at Stornoway Crag on Usk, opens amid political intrigue, fashionable excess, and elegant hypocrisy. Lady Allonby, Lord Rokesle, and the cynical cleric Simon Orts are drawn into scenes of suspicion, flirtation, and buried resentment, while the wider plot follows tangled loves and hard bargains. Marian and Humphrey Degge discover a true and tender love, even as the Duke of Ormskirk and Lord Brudenel argue over marriage, money, and happiness. As secrets emerge, a long-buried love triangle involving Marian and Alison forces painful recognition, exposing the cost of pride, social ambition, and "sensible" choices that crush the heart. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.