Jurgen was originally published in 1919, the first of James Branch Cabell's great pure fantasies. Cabell placed Jurgen as the sixth volume in the Storisende edition of the Biography of the Life of Manuel, between Chivalry and The Line of Love. More significant, perhaps, is that Jurgen forms kind of a trilogy with Figures of Earth and The Silver Stallion. These three works, together with Cabell's three witch-woman novellas—The Music from Behind the Moon, The White Robe, and The Way of Ecben—are the very best of Cabell, in my opinion.

The edition that I read was published by John Lane The Bodley Head in 1921 with beautiful photogravure illustrations by Frank C. Papé. My particular copy of this edition was rebound in leather, with the legend "Anne's Book, 23 July 1927" stamped in small gold letters on the front cover. I have often wondered who Anne was, and whether Jurgen was a single favourite book or whether it was one of a whole library of books bound in this fashion. The date formatting indicates she was probably British rather than American, but that's as far as I can guess.

Cabell's cosmology envisions Koshchei the Deathless, "he who made all things as they are,"  as the supreme god or principal. Jurgen, a the middle-aged pawnbroker and part-time poet, encounters a monk who has stubbed his toe and is cursing the Devil in consequence. Jurgen is a self-confessed "monstrous clever fellow," and he argues with the monk in support of the Devil. As a reward, Koshchei, as the  Devil, spirits away Jurgen's nagging wife, makes Jurgen again a young man, and sets him off on a series of fantastic romantic adventures.

Jurgen proceeds to seduce some of the most beautiful women in myth and legend, including Guinevere, Anaïtis the Sun's daughter (who is also the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend), the Hamadryad Chloris,  Count Emerick's sister Dorothy la Desirée (who is both a daughter of Dom Manuel and confusingly also Queen Helen of Troy), Queen Dolores the Phillistine, Florimel the demon, and so on.

Cabell often uses sexual innuendo, but in an amusing way that may appear harmless to us now, more than a century after the book was written. Nevertheless, Jurgen was subject of a prosecution  for obsenity soon after its publication, though perhaps less for its sexual content than Cabell's irreverent approach to Christianity. Through his adventures Jurgen successively promotes himself to Duke, Prince, King, and Emperor. Finally, after a time in Hell and a dalliance with Satan's wife, Phyllis, Jurgen  ascends to Heaven as the Pope. Cabell presents both Heaven and Hell as useful human inventions, at least in the sense of the romantic spirit that he describes in his book of philosophy and literary theory, Beyond Life.

In a dream, while cohabitating with the Hamadryad in an oak tree, Jurgen encounters Horvendile and Perion, the latter of course the chivalrous hero from Domnei. Horvendile, Jurgen, and Perion argue about the respective attractions of Dom Manuel's three daughter, Etarre, Dorothy, and Melicent. In this conversation, Horvendile remarks, 

Cabell is fairly explicitly telling us that this Koshchei, or the Devil, is also Horvendille, who is a major influence in Figures of Earth and The Silver Stallion—a figure in the background who orders everything. Moreover, Horvendile is effectively an alter ego of the author himself. So, yes, Cabell has cast himself as the Devil in Jurgen!

In the end, Jurgen meets up again with Koshchei, who again tempts him with some of the beautiful women of myth and legend. However, Jurgen turns them all down in favour of a return to his old life as a pawnbroker with his plain, nagging wife Lisa—of whom he is unaccountably fond.

In the end, therefore, the story of Jurgen cycles back to its beginning. Cabell uses the same device in Figures of Earth, but perhaps with even more success in the latter book, as Dom Manuel's memories of his fantastic life and rise to power are washed away, and he once again becomes a swineherd dreaming beside the Pool of Haranton.

Jurgen is certainly the best known of Cabell's books, largely because of the court case in the early 1920's, which made Cabell and his books household names. Nevertheless, as the first of Cabell's great fantasies, and close to his very best, Jurgen deserves to be remembered and read for its merits alone. I slightly prefer the somewhat lighter and perhaps more nearly perfect Figures of Earth, but there is little to choose between these three, if we include the third volume in this pseudo-trilogy, The Silver Stallion.