Cable was born in New Orleans on Oct. 12, 1884. He was a novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in Louisiana. He has been called "the most important southern writer of the later 19th century" as well as " the first modern southern writer". In 1885 he left the South and moved to Northampton, Massachusetts where he continued to write about the South. He died in 1925 in St. Petersburg, Florida.