Biblio Library

The Eagle’s Shadow: A Comedy of Purse-Strings is a romantic fantasy comedy novel by James Branch Cabell.

The Eagle’s Shadow is a historic novel taking place in the Middle Ages. The novel paints an intricate portrait of romance and power, immersing its reader into a fiction more real than they would like to admit. The Eagle’s Shadow is at times tragic and comedic, and is a brilliant social critique masquerading as romance, a literary work for all time.

The Eagle’s Shadow: A Comedy of Purse-Strings was first published in 1904. Audiobook read by Jon M. Wilson, running time 5 hours, 2 min. Unabridged full version. 

James Branch Cabell (1879 - 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. 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."