Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs (LOA #219) by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs (LOA #219) by Ambrose Bierce

A veteran of some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, Ambrose Bierce went on to become one of the darkest and most death haunted of American writers, the blackest of black humorists. This volume gathers the most celebrated and significant of Bierce's writings. In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians), his collection of short fiction about the Civil War, which includes the masterpieces An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Chickamauga, is suffused with a fiercely ironic sense of the horror and randomness of war. Can Such Things Be? brings together The Death of Halpin Frayser, The Damned Thing, The Moonlit Road, and other tales of terror that make Bierce the genre's most significant American practitioner between Poe and Lovecraft. The Devil's Dictionary, the brilliant lexicon of subversively cynical definitions on which Bierce worked for decades, displays to the full his corrosive wit. In Bits of Autobiography, the series of memoirs that includes the memorable What I Saw of Shiloh, he recreates his experiences in the war and its aftermath. The volume is rounded out with a selection of his best uncollected stories. Acclaimed Bierce scholar S. T. Joshi provides detailed notes and a newly researched chronology of Bierce's life and mysterious disappearance.

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Bierce, Ambrose: - Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842[2] - circa 1914[3]) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. Bierce's book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.[4] His story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has been described as one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature;[5] 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.[6] A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States, [7][8] and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction.[9] For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.[10] His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, [11] and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic.[12] In recent decades Bierce has gained wider respect as a fabulist and for his poetry.[13][14] In December 1913, Bierce traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution.[15] He disappeared, and was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops. He was never seen again. Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799-1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce.[2] He was of entirely English ancestry: all of his forebears came to North America between 1620 and 1640 as part of the Great Puritan Migration.[16] He often wrote critically of both Puritan values and people who made a fuss about genealogy.[17] He was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom were given names by their father beginning with the letter A: in order of birth, the Bierce siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia.[18] His mother was a descendant of William Bradford.[19] His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing.[2] Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat, Warsaw.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781598531022
ISBN 10	1598531026
Title	Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs (LOA #219)
Author	Ambrose Bierce
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The Library of America
Year published	2011-09-01
Number of pages	864
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable