The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce

Title

en_US The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce

en_US A Citadel Press Book

Description

en_US 11th printing

en_US Clifton Fadiman

Creator

en_US Bierce, Ambrose See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Fadiman, Clifton (Essayist)

Date

2016-01-25T16:29:26Z

en_US 1998-01

en_US 1989

Date Available

2016-01-25T16:29:26Z

Date Issued

en_US 1989

Abstract

en_US I am delighted to have found this book. It brings several things to my growing collection of Bierce materials. First there are, in the Fantastic Fables section of the book (543-660), fifteen short prose fables (632-6) from the London Fun from 1872-73. They are new to me. The best of them may be The Man with the Goose on 633. There are then forty-five fables in an Aesopus Emendatus section and seventeen in Old Saws with New Teeth, none of them new to me. There follow seven fables in rhyme, all new to me. My first reading of these inclines me to believe that prose was Bierce's medium! A final help is Fadiman's essay from 1946. It sets a very good tone for understanding Bierce as bitterly brutal. Fadiman writes of the Fantastic Fables that one should read no more than a dozen of them at a time. Their quality lies in their ferocious concentration of extra-double-distilled essential oil of misanthropy. They are so condensed that they take your breath away. The theme is always the same: mankind is a scoundrel; but the changes rung upon the theme demonstrate an almost abnormal inventiveness (xviii). The book was first published in 1946 by the Citadel Press.

Identifier

en_US 806501804

en_US 3034 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/78446

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US A Citadel Press Book: Carol Publishing Group

en_US NY

Subject

en_US PS1097.A1 1989 See all items with this value

en_US Bierce See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole