James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell (14 April 1879 – 5 May 1958) was an American author of science-fiction and belles lettres.

Arne Zettersten remembers sending J.R.R. Tolkien a newspaper article which suggested that Tolkien had been influenced by Cabell:

John D. Rateliff has proposed that the book, which Tolkien is referring to in Zettersten's reminiscence, is Cabell's Jurgen (1919).

The anthology The Young Magicians (1969) edited by Lin Carter, to which Tolkien contributed with two poems, also includes Cabell's "The Way of Ecben".

In Tales Before Tolkien (2003), editor Douglas A. Anderson includes Cabell's short story "The Thin Queen of Elfhame". Anderson writes that "Cabell represents a very different type of fantasy from Tolkien", the former often including irony in his writings.