Books by Ambrose Bierce

Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

Questing after Pancho Villa's revolutionary forces, Ambrose Bierce rode into Mexico in 1913 and was never seen again. He left behind him theDevil's Dictionary and a remarkable body of short fiction.
This new collection gathers some of Bierce's finest stories, including the celebrated Civil War fictions 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' and 'Chickamauga', his macabre masterpieces, and his tales of supernatural horror. Reminiscent of Poe, these stories are marked by a sardonic humour and a realistic study of tense emotional states.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Civil War Stories (Dover Thrift Editions: Short Stories)

by Ambrose Bierce

Newspaperman, short-story writer, poet, and satirist, Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) is one of the most striking and unusual literary figures America has produced. Dubbed "Bitter Bierce" for his vitriolic wit and biting satire, his fame rests largely on a celebrated compilation of barbed epigrams, The Devil's Dictionary, and a book of short stories (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891). Most of the 16 selections in this volume have been taken from the latter collection.
The stories in this edition include: "What I Saw at Shiloh," "A Son of the Gods," "Four Days in Dixie," "One of the Missing," "A Horseman in the Sky," "The Coup de Grace," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Story of Conscience," "One Kind of Officer," "Chickamauga," and five more.
Bierce's stories employ a buildup of suggestive realistic detail to produce grim and vivid tales often disturbing in their mood of fatalism and impending calamity. Hauntingly suggestive, they offer excellent examples of the author's dark pessimism and storytelling power.

The Devil's Dictionary (Dover Thrift Editions: Literary Collections)

by Ambrose Bierce

Born in Ohio in 1842, journalist, short-story writer and critic Ambrose Bierce developed into one of this country's most celebrated and cynical wits — a merciless "American Swift" whose literary barbs were aimed at folly, self-delusion, politics, business, religion, literature and the arts. In this splendid "dictionary" of epigrams, essays, verses and vignettes, you'll find over 1,000 pointed definitions, e.g. Congratulation ("The civility of envy"), Coward ("One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs") and Historian ("A broad-gauge gossip"). Anyone who likes to laugh will love The Devil's Dictionary. Anyone looking for a bon mot to enliven their next speech, paper or conversation will have a field day thumbing through what H. L. Mencken called "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language."

Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce

by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was one of the strangest phenomena of American letters. The adjectives used to describe his writing — and character — tend to have a rather uncomplimentary ring: "venomous," "vindictive," "paranoid," "rancorous," "malevolent"; yet few would deny his brilliance of intellect and style. About half of his fiction output consisted of stories of horror and the supernatural, a genre which appealed to his psychic constitution and may have reflected a deep inner torment.
This volume contains 24 of Bierce's best tales of the unknown. Morbid, cynical, eerie, they take you to a twilight region of flesh and spirit — and into the darkest recesses of the human mind. These are unusual constructions of terror and grim irony, reminiscent of Poe, the Gothic novel, and the Romantic short story, but having the unmistakable individual stamp of a man who knew first-hand something of the fears and specters which haunt men.
In this volume you will come across a number of old favorites: "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," "The Eyes of the Panther," "The Death of Halpin Frayser," "An Adventure at Brownville," and such classics as "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," "The Damned Thing," and "Moonlit Road," a minor masterpiece in which events of the story are told from three different points of view, including that of the victim as spoken through a medium. You will also find some less familiar, but equally fascinating stories and pieces not available elsewhere, including "Visions of the Night," in which Bierce gives us a rationale for his "reverse holiness" and the surrealistic morality that permeates these writings. Bierce's characters — possessed poets, shabby aristocrats, grimy professional men, revived corpses, haunted malefactors — live in a spare, perverse world. Patricide, the revenge of the dead, inexplicable disappearances, dreadful ironies, hypnotism and second sight, and the like, form much of the substance of these unsettling tales.

The Devil's Dictionary

by Ambrose Bierce, Mr Ambrose Bierce

Bierce's classic work of satirical wit and Steadman's pointed pen redefine the way we see even the seemingly simplest of terms.

Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.
Bride, n.: A woman with a great future behind her.
Consult, v: To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.

Ambrose Bierce's "dictionary" of epigrams, essays, verses, and vignettes targets the religious, the romantic, the political, and the economic, in equal measure. The book you need to define both friends and enemies, The Devil's Dictionary is also the perfect gift, showcasing Bierce's razor-sharp wit and Ralph Steadman's incisive pen to their best advantage.

The Devil's Dictionary

by Ambrose Bierce, Mr Ambrose Bierce

Born in Ohio in 1842, journalist, short-story writer and critic Ambrose Bierce developed into one of this country's most celebrated and cynical wits — a merciless "American Swift" whose literary barbs were aimed at folly, self-delusion, politics, business, religion, literature and the arts. In this splendid "dictionary" of epigrams, essays, verses and vignettes, you'll find over 1,000 pointed definitions, e.g. Congratulation ("The civility of envy"), Coward ("One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs") and Historian ("A broad-gauge gossip"). Anyone who likes to laugh will love The Devil's Dictionary. Anyone looking for a bon mot to enliven their next speech, paper or conversation will have a field day thumbing through what H. L. Mencken called "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language."

The Devil's Dictionary

by Ambrose Bierce, Mr Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce, journalist and former soldier for the Union army in the Civil War, began writing satirical definitions for the San Francisco Wasp in 1881, and later for the San Francisco Examiner, launching a journalistic career that would see him liked and loathed in equal measure and earn him the title of “the wickedest man in San Francisco.”

A contemporary of Mark Twain, Bierce brought his biting humor to bear on spoof definitions of everyday words, writing deliberate mistranslations of the vocabulary of the establishment, the church, and the politics of his day, and shining a sardonic light on hypocrisy and deception. These columns formed the beginnings of a dictionary, first published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book, which stopped at the letter L, and five years later as a full A–Z text known as The Devil's Dictionary. More than one hundred years later, Bierce’s redefinitions still give us pause for thought: interpreting reporter, for example, as “a writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words”; un-american as “wicked, intolerable, heathenish”; and politics as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” This timely new edition of Bierce’s irreverent and provocative dictionary is the perfect gift for misanthropes and word lovers alike.

Ambrose Bierce's Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers

by Ambrose Bierce, Jan Freeman

One of America's foremost language experts presents an annotated edition of A mbrose Bierce's classic catalog of correct speech.

Ambrose Bierce is best known for The Devil's Dictionary, but the prolific journalist, satirist, and fabulist was also a usage maven. In 1909, he published several hundred of his pet peeves in Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults.
Bierce's list includes some distinctions still familiar today--the which-that rule, less vs. fewer, lie and lay -- but it also abounds in now-forgotten shibboleths: Ovation, the critics of his time agreed, meant a Roman triumph, not a round of applause. Reliable was an ill-formed coinage, not for the discriminating. Donate was pretentious, jeopardize should be jeopard, demean meant "comport oneself," not "belittle." And Bierce made up a few peeves of his own for good measure. We should say "a coating of paint," he instructed, not "a coat."
To mark the 100th anniversary of Write It Right, language columnist Jan Freeman has investigated where Bierce's rules and taboos originated, how they've fared in the century since the blacklist, and what lies ahead. Will our language quibbles seem as odd in 2109 as Bierce's do today? From the evidence offered here, it looks like a very good bet.

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

by Ambrose Bierce

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.

A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.

This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.

Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

The Devil's Dictionary: Satirical Definitions of Everyday Words

by Ambrose Bierce

"Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy."

In this extraordinary work of scathing satire, Ambrose Bierce provided new humorous definitions of the words that formed the lexicon of contemporary American life.

Accumulated over three decades for a series of magazines and newspapers, the entries in The Devil's Dictionary painted a revealing portrait of late 19th-century American life, with all its contradictions and hypocrisies laid bare.

Bierce's fantastic wit and incredible gift for irony shine through this true masterpiece of American literature.

Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs (LOA #219): In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians) / Can Such Things Be? / ... / selected stories (Library of America)

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.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Gothic Fantasy: Terrifying Ghosts Short Stories

by Ambrose Bierce, Amelia B. Edwards, Lafcadio Hearn, E.f. Benson, A.C. Benson

Ghastly castles, haunted mansions, shadowy forests and long, dark corridors... This new addition to the Gothic Fantasy series is packed with tales of terror, bringing together the new and the familiar, the unusual and the unexpected. Featuring many stories from open submissions by new writers, Terrifying Ghosts Short Stories delivers a satisfying read for the anyone fascinated by glimpses of the beyond: master storytellers featured include A.C. Benson, E.F. Benson, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Marjorie Bowen, Francis Marion Crawford, Charles Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, Henry James, M.R. James, Bram Stoker and Edith Wharton.

The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

The Damned Thing, Deluxe Edition: Weird and Ghostly Tales

by Ambrose Bierce

A bone-chilling, beautifully produced new collection of 11 uncanny tales from one of the great American masters of the ghost story

Any lover of dark and unsettling tales will be enthralled by the short stories in this collection, all from the pen of the great Ambrose Bierce.

Bierce is often seen as the link between Poe and Lovecraft in the American fantastical tradition, and this collection showcases his mastery of the macabre.

A murder is relived from three startling perspectives; a hunter is driven out of his mind by an invisible, malevolent entity; a man meets a terrifying end in an abandoned house; a werepanther creeps through a window in the dead of night...

Contains:
The Damned Thing; The Moonlit Road; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; The Death of Halpin Frayser; The Suitable Surroundings; The Middle Toe of the Right Foot; Moxon's Master; An Adventure at Brownville; The Eyes of the Panther; The Spook House; An Inhabitant of Carcosa

The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (Oneworld Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

On arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl, Benedicta. She is shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman, but Ambrosius is drawn into a dangerous sympathy with her, and in defiance of the community and his superiors, he starts spending time alone with her. But when her virtue is corrupted by an impetuous young man, the stage is set for a battle between heart, mind, body, spirit, the sins of the past, and redemption. Allegedly a rewriting from a lost German original, Ambrose Bierce's 1892 novel reads as a seamless, almost folktale-like masterpiece.

Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird (New York Review Books Classics)

by Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, R. W. Chambers

From the fictional land of Carcosa that inspired the HBO show True Detective to H. P. Lovecraft’s accursed New England hills, this collection features some of the most legendary landscapes of the cosmic horror genre. The collection includes the following twelve stories:

Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations"
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds"
Arthur Machen, "The White People"
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"

“The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”—H. P. Lovecraft

The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce

by Ambrose Bierce

Before he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius. Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.

Gothic Horror Stories Frightful Tales of the Supernatural

by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

This chilling collection brings together 15 classic tales by landmark gothic writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Sheridan Le Fanu, presented in a luxury hardback edition with striking sprayed edge designs.

Gothic fiction emerged in the 18th century, recognized for its bleak and sinister landscapes which housed unnatural forces of evil. Often controversial in their time, these stories pushed the boundaries of what was possible in fiction and evoked unsettling emotions as they told their tales of mysterious places, lost secrets, and sudden, shocking violence.

This collection brings together the very best within the genre, featuring crumbling castles, chilling cathedrals, and haunted manors as their eerie settings. Supernatural terrors lurk around every corner.

Includes:
- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Red Room by H.G. Wells
- Oglala by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Dream by Mary Shelley
- A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family by Sheridan Le Fanu

Presented in a striking gift edition with a silver-embossed cover design, sprayed edges, ivory paper and beautiful endpaper designs, this anthology makes a wonderful treasury for lovers of gothic horror.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Gilded Classics series presents luxury gift editions of classics works, printed on opulent ivory paper, featuring hardcover Wibilin binding, foil-embossed cover designs, striking page edges and beautiful endpaper designs . These make perfect collectibles for lovers of classic literature.

Horror Stories Shocking Tales of Unspeakable Terror

by Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson

Feast your eyes on this luxurious hardback anthology of 18 classic tales of horror, presented with gilded page edges, patterned endpapers and a striking, gold-embossed cover design.

The 18 terrifying tales in this collection are created by some of literature's finest writers of horror, including Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, and Bram Stoker. In stories filled with death, obsession, and paranoia, you will encounter hideous demons, abandoned castles, and gruesome discoveries. So settle down and prepare to be petrified.

Tales include:
- The Invisible Giant by Bram Stoker
- The Tapestried Chamber by Sir Walter Scott
- A Warning to the Curious by M. R. James
- The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley
- A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Hearn
- The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson
- The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson
- The Horror at Red Hook by H. P. Lovecraft
- The Ghost and the Bone-setter by Sheridan Le Fanu
- And more

This beautiful compendium is presented with gold gilded page-edges, patterned endpapers, ivory paper and a gold-embossed cover design, making it a wonderful gift or collectible for any horror lover.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Gilded Classics presents luxury gift editions of classic works, printed on opulent ivory paper, featuring hardcover Wibalin binding, foil-embossed cover designs, beautifully designed end-papers and gilded page edges. These make perfectible collectibles for bibliophiles and lovers of classic literature.

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)

by Ambrose Bierce

Journalist, short story writer, poet, and critic Ambrose Bierce has been called one of America's greatest wits and an uncompromising satirist. He wrote unsparingly and with haunting realism of his Civil War experiences. His finest and most famous Civil War writings are gathered in this volume of six essays and twenty stories, including "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "What I Saw of Shiloh," and "A Horseman in the Sky." Edited and introduced by William McCann, this annotated Warbler Classics edition also includes a detailed biographical timeline of Bierce's personal and professional life.