Ambrose Bierce: a pioneer of political irony and terror

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842– 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named as one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has been described as “one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature”; and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.

A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States, and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. S. T. Joshi speculates that he may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produced, and in this regard can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic. In recent decades Bierce has gained wider respect as a fabulist and for his poetry.

In December 1913, Bierce traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared, and was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops. He was never seen again.

Literary Works

During his lifetime, Bierce was better known as a journalist than as a fiction writer. His most popular stories were written in rapid succession between 1888 and 1891, in what was characterized as “a tremendous burst of consummate art”. Bierce’s works often highlight the inscrutability of the universe and the absurdity of death.

Bierce wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge“, “A Horseman in the Sky“, “One of the Missing“, and “Chickamauga“. His grimly realistic cycle of 25 war stories has been called “the greatest anti-war document in American literature”.

According to Milton Subotsky, Bierce helped pioneer the psychological horror story. In addition to his ghost and war stories, he also published several volumes of poetry. His Fantastic Fables anticipated the ironic style of grotesquerie that became a more common genre in the 20th century.

One of Bierce’s most famous works is his much-quoted The Devil’s Dictionary, originally an occasional newspaper item, first published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book. Described as “howlingly funny”, it consists of satirical definitions of English words which lampoon cant and political double-talk. Bierce edited the twelve volumes of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, which were published from 1909 to 1912. The seventh volume consists solely of The Devil’s Dictionary.

Bierce has been criticized by his contemporaries and later scholars for deliberately pursuing improbability and for his penchant toward “trick endings”. In his later stories, apparently under the influence of Maupassant, Bierce “dedicated himself to shocking the audience”, as if his purpose was “to attack the reader’s smug intellectual security”.

Bierce’s bias towards Naturalism has also been noted: “The biting, deriding quality of his satire, unbalanced by any compassion for his targets, was often taken as petty meanness, showing contempt for humanity and an intolerance to the point of merciless cruelty”.

Stephen Crane was of the minority of Bierce’s contemporaries who valued Bierce’s experimental short stories. In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, H. P. Lovecraft characterized Bierce’s fictional work as “grim and savage.” Lovecraft goes on to say that nearly all of Bierce’s stories are of the horror genre and some shine as great examples of weird fiction.

Critic William Dean Howells said, “Mr. Bierce is among our three greatest writers.” When told this, Bierce responded, “I am sure Mr. Howells is the other two.”

Works

Volumes published

Published during Bierce’s lifetime

The Fiend’s Delight(as by “Dod Grile”). (London: John Camden Hotten, 1873). Stories, satire, journalism, poetry.
Nuggets and Dust Panned Out in California(as by “Dod Grile”). (London: Chatto & Windus, 1873). Stories, satire, epigrams, journalism.
Cobwebs from an Empty Skull(as by “Dod Grile”). (London and New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1874). Fables, stories, journalism.
(with Thomas A. Harcourt) The Dance of Death(as by “William Herman”). (San Francisco: H. Keller & Co., 1877). Satire.
Map of the Black HillsRegion, Showing the Gold Mining District and the Seat of the Indian War (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1877). Nonfiction: map.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians(San Francisco: E. L. G. Steele, 1891; many subsequent editions, some under the title In the Midst of Life). Fiction: stories.
(with A. Danziger) The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter(Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1892). Fiction: novel (translation of Der Mönch von Berchtesgaden by Richard Voss).
Black Beetles in Amber(San Francisco and New York: Western Authors Publishing, 1892).
Can Such Things Be? (New York: Cassell, 1893). Fiction: stories.
How Blind Is He (San Francisco: F. Soulé Campbell, 1896). Poetry.
Fantastic Fables(New York and London: P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899). Fiction: fables.
Shapes of Clay(San Francisco: W. E. Wood George Sterling, 1903).
The Cynic’s Word Book(New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1906).
A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky(San Francisco: Paul Elder, 1907). Fiction: stories.
Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults(New York and Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing, 1909). Nonfiction: precise use of words.
The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays O. Howes, ed. (San Francisco: A.M. Robertson, 1909). Collected journalism.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce(New York and Washington, DC: Neale Publishing, 1909–1912):
- Volume I: Ashes of the Beacon
- Volume II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
- Volume III: Can Such Things Be?
- Volume IV: Shapes of Clay
- Volume V: Black Beetles in Amber
- Volume VI: The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter; Fantastic Fables
- Volume VII: The Devil’s Dictionary
- Volume VIII: Negligible Tales; On with the Dance; Epigrams
- Volume IX: Tangential Views
- Volume X: The Opinionator
- Volume XI: Antepenultimata
- Volume XII: In Motley

Published posthumously

Fiction

My Favorite Murder(New York: Curtis J. Kirch, 1916)
A Horseman in the Sky: A Watcher by the Dead: The Man and the Snake(San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1920)
Ten Tales(London: First Edition Club, 1925)
Fantastic Debunking Fables(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1926)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgeand Other Stories (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1926)
The Horseman in the Sky and Other Stories(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1926)
Tales of Ghouls and Ghosts(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
Tales of Haunted Houses(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
My Favorite Murder and Other Stories(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
Ghost and Horror Stories, F. Bleiler, ed. (New York: Dover, 1964)
The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Ernest Jerome Hopkins, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970)
The Stories and Fables of Ambrose Bierce, Edward Wagenknecht, ed. (Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House, 1977)
For the Ahkoond(West Warwick, RI: Necromomicon Press, 1980)
A Horseman in the Sky(Skokie, IL: Black Cat Press, 1983)
One of the Missing: Tales of the War Between the States(Covelo, CA: Yolla Bolly Press, 1991)
Civil War Stories(New York: Dover, 1994)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgeand Other Stories (London: Penguin, 1995)
The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories(Mineola, NY: Dover, 1998)
A Deoderizer of Dead Dogs, Carl Japikse, ed. (Alpharetta, GA: Enthea Press, 1998)
The Collected Fables of Ambrose Bierce, T. Joshi, ed. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000)
The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce: A Comprehensive Edition(3 vols.), T. Joshi, Lawrence I. Berkove, and David E. Schultz, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2006)
Ambrose Bierce: Masters of the Weird Tale, T. Joshi, ed. (Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2013)

Satire

Extraordinary Opinions on Commonplace Subjects(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
A Cynic Looks at Life(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce, George Barkin, ed. (New York: Dover, 1963)
The Fall of the Republic and Other Political Satires, T. Joshiand David E. Schultz, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2000)

Poetry

An Invocation(San Francisco: John Henry Nash/Book Club of California, 1928)
The Lion and the Lamb(Berkeley: Archetype Press, 1939)
A Vision of Doom: Poems by Ambrose Bierce, Donald Sidney-Fryer, ed. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, Publisher 1980)
Poems of Ambrose Bierce, E. Grenander, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995)

Journalism

Selections from Prattle, Carroll D. Hall, ed. (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1936)
The Ambrose Bierce Satanic Reader, Ernest Jerome Hopkins, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968)
Skepticism and Dissent: Selected Journalism from 1898–1901, Lawrence I. Berkove, ed. (Ann Arbor: Delmas, 1980)

Autobiography

Iconoclastic Memories of the Civil War: Bits of Autobiography(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1927)
Battle Sketches(London: First Editions Club, 1930)
A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography, T. Joshiand David E. Schultz, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1998)

Collections of mixed types of content

The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce(New York: Citadel Press, 1946)
Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War, William McCann, ed. (Chicago: Gateway Editions, 1956)
The Devil’s Advocate: An Ambrose Bierce Reader, Brian St. Pierre, ed. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgeand Selected Works (Des Moines: Perfection Form Co., 1991)
Shadows of Blue and Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce, Brian M. Thomsen, ed. (New York: Forge, 2002)
Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period: The Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce, Russell Duncan and David J. Klooster, eds. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2002)
Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs, T. Joshi, ed. (Boone, IA: Library of America, 2011)

Letters

Containing Four Ambrose Bierce Letters(New York: Charles Romm, 1921)
The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, Bertha Clark Pope[and George Sterling, uncredited], eds. (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1922)
Twenty-one Letters of Ambrose Bierce, Samuel Loveman, ed. (Cleveland: George Kirk, 1922)
A Letter and a Likeness(n.p.: Harvey Taylor, [1930?])
Battlefields and Ghosts(Palo Alto: Harvest Press, 1931)
Ambrose Bierce: “My Dear Rearden”: a Letter.(Berkeley: Bancroft Library Press, 1997)
A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce, T. Joshiand David E. Schultz, eds. (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2003)
My Dear Mac: Three Letters(Berkeley: Bancroft Library Press, 2006)

Short stories

Ambrose Bierce was a prolific writer of short fiction. He wrote 249 short stories,^[85] 846 fables,^[86] and more than 300 humorous Little Johnny stories.^[87] The following list provides links to more information about notable stories by Bierce.

War stories