The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs
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The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. In May 1908, the young publisher Walter Neale approached Bierce with a proposal that they produce an edition of his Collected Works, in ten volumes, over five years. Bierce expressed his doubts that the proposal would prove a financial success for Neale but quickly agreed to it; he signed a contract in June, assisted Neale in the preparation of a prospectus, and within a couple of months had planned and largely assembled a manuscript for the first five volumes. Finished volumes began appearing in 1909, the first in February and the second in October; two followed in 1910, six in 1911, and two more in 1912, Neale having decided he was able to expand his original scheme from ten to twelve volumes. Bierce was intensely involved in the preparation of each volume: he selected the contents, revised the texts, and with his assistant, Carrie Christiansen, carefully corrected two sets of proofs. Though its contents were drawn mainly from previously published works, he took the new edition as an occasion for definitive revision, leaving little untouched. Preparing his works for the typesetter, he significantly altered the arrangements of earlier collections and in some cases extensively rewrote earlier versions. And though he found cause for concern in some exigent circumstances as he prepared the new edition—he complained particularly about the incompetence of Neale’s printer and proofreaders, and he sometimes struggled to find ways of fitting previously published collections into volumes arbitrarily designed at the outset to run to about 400 pages each—he retained an unusual degree of control over the form in which his works finally appeared. The Collected Works was not reprinted during Bierce’s lifetime, nor were the individual collections it contains. The text of the present volume follows that of the Collected Works (except for “Mrs. Dennison’s Head”); the original publication history and the extent of Bierce’s revisions to prior collections is discussed below.
In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians). This second volume of Bierce’s Collected Works, published in October 1909, contains twenty-six stories: fifteen “Soldiers” and eleven “Civilians.” All of these stories had appeared initially in periodicals, mainly the San Francisco Examiner, between 1878 and 1897. All had been published in book form as well: fifteen in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (San Francisco: E.L.G. Steele, 1891 [February 1892]), later republished in England, under a title to which Bierce strenuously objected after the fact, as In the Midst of Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1892, 1898, 1910); seventeen in an expanded edition of In the Midst of Life (New York & London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898, 1901); and nine in Can Such Things Be? (New York: Cassell Publishing, 1893). Bierce chose not to include, in In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians), four stories included in the 1892 and 1898 editions of Tales of Soldiers and Civilians / In the Midst of Life: “A Tough Tussle,” “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot,” and “Haïta the Shepherd,” gathering them instead, in the Collected Works, in Can Such Things Be?
The list that follows gives further details about the original periodical appearances of the stories in the Collected Works text of In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians). Stories collected in the American and English first editions (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians [1892] and In the Midst of Life [1892]) are marked with an asterisk (*); stories first collected in the expanded 1898 In the Midst of Life are marked with a section sign (§); and stories first collected in the 1893 first edition of Can Such Things Be? are marked with a dagger (†):
SOLDIERS
*A Horseman in the Sky: San Francisco Examiner, April 14, 1889.
*An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: San Francisco Examiner, July 13, 1890.
*Chickamauga: San Francisco Examiner, January 20, 1889.
*A Son of the Gods: San Francisco Examiner, July 29, 1888.
*One of the Missing: San Francisco Examiner, March 11, 1888.
*Killed at Resaca: San Francisco Examiner, June 5, 1887.
*The Affair at Coulter’s Notch: San Francisco Examiner, October 20, 1889.
*The Coup de Grâce: San Francisco Examiner, June 30, 1889.
*Parker Adderson, Philosopher: San Francisco Examiner, February 22, 1891.
§An Affair of Outposts: San Francisco Examiner, December 29, 1897.
†The Story of a Conscience: San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1890.
†One Kind of Officer: San Francisco Examiner, January 1, 1893.
†One Officer, One Man: San Francisco Examiner, February 17, 1889.
†George Thurston: The Wasp (San Francisco), September 29, 1883.
†The Mocking-Bird: San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1891.
CIVILIANS
†The Man Out of the Nose: San Francisco Examiner, July 10, 1887
†An Adventure at Brownville: San Francisco Examiner, April 3, 1892.
†The Famous Gilson Bequest: Argonaut (San Francisco), October 26, 1878.
†The Applicant: Wave (San Francisco), December 17, 1892.
*A Watcher by the Dead: San Francisco Examiner, December 29, 1889.
*The Man and the Snake: San Francisco Examiner, June 29, 1890.
*A Holy Terror: The Wasp (San Francisco), December 23, 1882.
*The Suitable Surroundings: San Francisco Examiner, July 14, 1889.
*The Boarded Window: San Francisco Examiner, April 29, 1891.
*A Lady from Redhorse: San Francisco Examiner, March 15, 1891 (as “An Heiress from Redhorse”).
§The Eyes of the Panther: San Francisco Examiner, October 17, 1897.
While the revisions Bierce introduced in the Collected Works text are demonstrably authoritative, it has been argued that by 1909 he had grown remote from the spirit in which he originally conceived his Tales and that in rearranging them he damaged their aesthetic integrity (see Donald T. Blume, Ambrose Bierce’s Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, and Blume’s eclectic text of Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, both published by Kent State University Press in 2004). Readers of the present volume, which accepts Bierce’s revisions, may nevertheless obtain a sense of Bierce’s 1892 collection by following its order of presentation of the stories: “A Horseman in the Sky” through “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” (pages 3–60), “A Tough Tussle” (262–69), “The Coup de Grâce” through “Parker Adderson, Philosopher” (61–73), “A Watcher by the Dead” through “The Suitable Surroundings” (149–88), “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (370–73), “The Boarded Window (189–93), “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” (331–39), “Haïta the Shepherd” (364–69), and “A Lady from Redhorse” 194–99). The text of In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians) in the present volume follows that of the Collected Works. A line of type inadvertently dropped from the Collected Works text—“road in the opposite direction at headlong” at 54.22–23 in the present volume—has been supplied from the 1891 Steele edition.
Can Such Things Be? All of the supernatural tales Bierce gathered in Can Such Things Be?—the third volume of his Collected Works, published in April 1910—had appeared in print at least once before, but Bierce revised them, in some cases extensively, for the Collected Works. He had published a considerably different group of stories under the same title in 1893 (New York: Cassell Publishing), and again, with the addition of a new preface, in 1903 (Washington, DC: Neale Publishing). Of the thirty-three stories contained in both the 1893 and 1903 editions of Can Such Things Be?, Bierce selected fourteen for inclusion in the 1910 Collected Works; he omitted nineteen, and added twenty-eight from other sources. (Of the nineteen omitted stories, eleven are reprinted elsewhere in the present volume: nine in the 1909 text of In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians), and two in “Selected Stories.”) In the list that follows, which gives details about the original periodical publication of each story in the Collected Works text and their subsequent publication history during Bierce’s lifetime, those stories that were collected in the 1893 and 1903 editions are marked with an asterisk (*); stories first collected in the 1892 first edition of Tales of Soldiers and Civi
lians are marked with a dagger (†); one story first collected in 1898 in In the Midst of Life is marked with a section mark (§):
CAN SUCH THINGS BE?
*The Death of Halpin Frayser: The Wave (San Francisco), December 19, 1891.
*The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch: The Wave (San Francisco), April 25, 1891.
One Summer Night: Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
The Moonlit Road: Cosmopolitan, January 1907.
A Diagnosis of Death: New York Journal, December 8, 1901.
Moxon’s Master: San Francisco Examiner, April 16, 1899.
†A Tough Tussle: San Francisco Examiner, September 30, 1899.
*One of Twins: San Francisco Examiner, October 28, 1888.
The Haunted Valley: Overland Monthly, July 1871.
A Jug of Sirup: San Francisco Examiner, December 17, 1893.
Staley Fleming’s Hallucination: Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
A Resumed Identity: Cosmopolitan, September 1908.
*A Baby Tramp: Wave (San Francisco), August 29, 1891.
*The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”: Argonaut (San Francisco), December 29, 1877.
Beyond the Wall: Cosmopolitan, December 1907.
*A Psychological Shipwreck: Argonaut (San Francisco), April 24, 1879.
†The Middle Toe of the Right Foot: San Francisco Examiner, August 17, 1890.
John Mortonson’s Funeral: Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
*The Realm of the Unreal: San Francisco Examiner, July 29, 1890.
*John Bartine’s Watch: San Francisco Examiner, January 22, 1893.
§The Damned Thing: Town Topics (New York), December 7, 1893.
†Haïta the Shepherd: Wave (San Francisco), January 24, 1891.
†An Inhabitant of Carcosa: San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser, December 25, 1886.
The Stranger: Cosmpolitan, February 1909.
THE WAYS OF GHOSTS
Present at a Hanging: San Francisco Examiner, June 24, 1888.
A Cold Greeting: San Francisco Examiner, August 26, 1888.
A Wireless Message: Cosmopolitan, October 1905.
An Arrest: Cosmopolitan, October 1905.
SOLDIER-FOLK
A Man with Two Lives: Cosmopolitan, October 1905.
Three and One Are One: Cosmopolitan, October 1908.
A Baffled Ambuscade: Cosmopolitan, October 1906.
Two Military Executions: Cosmopolitan, November 1906.
SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
*The Isle of Pines: San Francisco Examiner, August 26, 1888.
*A Fruitless Assignment: San Francisco Examiner, June 24, 1888.
A Vine on a House: Cosmopolitan, October 1905.
At Old Man Eckert’s: San Francisco Examiner, November 17, 1901.
The Spook House: San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 1889.
The Other Lodgers: Cosmopolitan, August 1907.
*The Thing at Nolan: San Francisco Examiner, August 2, 1891.
“MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES”
*The Difficulty of Crossing a Field: San Francisco Examiner, October 14, 1888.
*An Unfinished Race: San Francisco Examiner, October 14, 1888.
*Charles Ashmore’s Trail: San Francisco Examiner, April 14, 1888.
Science to the Front (coda to “Charles Ashmore’s Trail”): Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, September 27, 1890.
The text of Can Such Things Be? in the present volume has been taken from the 1910 Collected Works edition.
The Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, first published in its entirety in June 1911 as volume seven of his Collected Works and not subsequently reprinted during his lifetime, gathers a selection of his contrarian “dictionary” definitions originally written over a span of three decades, between 1881 and 1911. He had begun publishing such definitions even earlier: a group of forty-eight, titled “The Demon’s Dictionary,” appeared in the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser on December 11, 1875, though Bierce did not subsequently republish these. He first used the title “The Devil’s Dictionary” in The Wasp (San Francisco) on March 5, 1881—beginning with a definition for “Accuracy”—and by 1886, when he ceased writing for The Wasp, he had proceeded through the alphabet to “Lickspittle.” He published two more groups of definitions in the San Francisco Examiner—beginning with “Life”—on September 4, 1887 and April 29, 1888, under the title “The Cynic’s Dictionary.” His original title had probably been censored by his editors at the Examiner or its publisher William Randolph Hearst, though no particular evidence about the matter is known to be extant. A subsequent publisher—Doubleday, Page—also disliked it, as Bierce explained in a 1906 letter to the poet George Sterling: “They (the publishers) won’t have ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ Here in the East the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity, as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.”
No further “dictionary” items appeared for another sixteen years, and Bierce is not known to have commented on this hiatus in his project. In July 1904, however, he revived “The Cynic’s Dictionary” in the New York American, first with new “A” definitions, then beginning again in the alphabet where he had left his project in 1888, with “Ma.” By January 1905, he had proceeded part-way through the letter “P.” The reappearance of Bierce’s dictionary items in print may have been prompted by some discussions in the previous year with his protégés Herman Scheffauer and George Sterling about collecting his “Devil’s Dictionary” items in book form. In September 1903, he wrote Scheffauer that he lacked “enough ‘epigrams and aphorisms’ to make a published collection,” but he hoped that “some publisher of the future” might be interested in “my ‘Devil’s Dictionary,’ which I want to keep intact.” In October 1903, Sterling proposed to arrange for the publication of The Devil’s Dictionary. (Along with Scheffauer, he had similarly arranged and paid for Bierce’s Shapes of Clay, a book of poems published earlier in the year). Bierce declined Sterling’s offer, and another in March 1905 from Robert Mackay, editor of Success. Instead, he decided to publish with Doubleday, Page, and in November 1905 he reported he was compiling the collection for them. He finished a draft of the book in January 1906 and signed a contract in February. In March, writing to another correspondent—S. O. Howes of Galveston, Texas, then putting together a book of Bierce’s newspaper work, The Shadow on the Dial (1909)—he complained that Doubleday, Page had, “in the manner of publishers,” wanted “some alterations made—as if I had not made enough!” and protested a new title they had suggested: “‘A Few Definitions.’ The idea!” Eventually, Bierce and Doubleday, Page compromised on The Cynic’s Word Book as a title (The Cynic’s Dictionary having been used for a 1905 volume by Harry Arthur Thompson), and he accommodated their requests for other revisions. (“My dealings with them have been most pleasant,” he went on to report to Sterling.) He began proofreading in May 1906, and The Cynic’s Word Book, including definitions from A through L, was published in October. Bierce hoped to follow up with a second volume of definitions from M through Z, but sales of the first volume ultimately failed to support this aspiration. With a sequel in mind, however, he continued to publish new definitions for “The Cynic’s Word Book” in newspapers (revising his earlier title to match that of the the new collection), while the first volume was at the press, working through the alphabet to “Reconciliation” before he once again set the project aside.
He resumed in 1911, when he added The Devil’s Dictionary to his Collected Works. His setting copy for the new edition was assembled first from the pages of The Cynic’s Word Book, which he lightly revised, without attempting in any systematic way to undo the changes he had made to his original newspaper columns at the request of Doubleday, Page. To these entries (A–L), he added those (M–R) he had published in the San Francisco Examiner and the New York American but not in book form, again lightly revising. To complete the alphabet, he added a typescript mainly consisting of newly composed definitions, with some interp
olation of previously published material. Throughout, he occasionally cut, added, or rearranged entries. For further detail about the prior publication history of individual definitions in The Devil’s Dictionary, see The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection that also contains dictionary items Bierce omitted from The Devil’s Dictionary either deliberately or inadvertently.
As with other volumes in his Collected Works, Bierce complained about the typesetting of The Devil’s Dictionary. However, with his assistant Carrie Christiansen, he saw the book through second proofs and retained considerable control over the form in which his work ultimately appeared. The present volume, in addition to correcting the typographical errors listed at the end of this note, has rearranged the sequence of entries in the text of the Collected Works so that it follows alphabetical order: GENEALOGY now comes after GARTER rather than GENEROUS; HOMŒPATHIST AND HOMŒPATHY after HOMILETICS rather than HOG; IN’ARDS after INADMISSIBLE rather than INK; LOGANIMITY after LODGER rather than LOGOMACHY; POLITICIAN after POLITENESS rather than POLITICS; RADICALISM, RADIUM, RAILROAD and RAMSHACKLE after RACK not READING; SANDLOTTER after SALAMANDER not SACRED; and TRUST after TRUCE not TRUTHFUL. The text of The Devil’s Dictionary in the present volume has otherwise been taken from the Collected Works.
Bits of Autobiography. Bierce’s Bits of Autobiography was first published as a distinct work in February 1909, as volume one of his Collected Works, and it was not reprinted during his lifetime. In assembling the new work, Bierce drew on autobiographical essays he had published over a period of twenty-five years, beginning in 1881; he revised all eleven essays, in some cases extensively, for the Collected Works. In the case of two of the essays, “On a Mountain” and “ ’Way Down in Alabam’,” original publication details are now obscure: Bierce’s typesetting copy of the Collected Works, now at the Huntington Library, includes clippings of published versions of these essays, probably from 1887–88 issues of the San Francisco Examiner no longer known to be extant, but they are not definitively identifiable. The remaining essays were originally published as follows: