The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-12-17


 Edited and arranged by the author. The Neale Publishing company, New York)
 In the ten volumes entitled "The Col lected Works of Ambrose Bierce," the author presents to the literary world his views of life in prose and verse, satire and epigram, fiction and dissertation. in such an admirable manner that none is needed as his successor.
 He has defined the best and the worst so well that those who have awaited Ills collection of writings are pleased to have them, elaborately and beautifully gotten up. and in such readable form.
 Mir Ambrose Bierce began his literary career with that for which pupils of the school made famous by kipling asd Jack London have spent their lives seek ing.
 He has been called the .Insider." an epithet derived from the fact that he has learned life with the limit of'-not as a spectator, nor an outsider. but as . participant.
 Tn his youth, serving with Grant and Sherman he found adventure in mud and blood at Shnoh-he heard and saw and knew Chiekam8oga. and the m1n who legins life under such auspices for gets more than most of us ever learned in the "red blooa+ Of literary adventures
  perience of life help from such teachers as Voltaire Swift TnzsrSoll. Juvenai, Pope and others of their Ik, down to the close of the nineteenth century.
 His imagination runs riot in his bits of autobosraphy" and his stories of "soldiers and civilians are tnimitaole ia their cleverness, while his war stories are without peer in the observadonist school
 Mr Rierce writes strongly. brutally, boldly and clearly Of men and events, and so glorifes every subject that he touches upon that he absorbs the atten- ton and enlists the sympathy Of his readers far beyond anything that other writers could hope to do.
 Taking LID The Collected Works of Ambroise Bierce" at the sixth volume, we find the novelette, The Hansmsn's Daughter" and Fantastic Fables
 The first mentioned has long been eu5 of print. and came back to the reaolns rrblic now in refined and altered gara- more finished. more interesting than ever Nothing could be more delightful than to find in the seventh volume The DeFll Dictionary" in it's entirety. Some wears ago the "Dictionary' was published up to about the middle letter of the alphabet. under the title Of The Cynic's Word Book thus giving ''half ] a book to the reading world. while the other half starved-perdue.' .The Devils Dictionary furnishes readable comment upon the niceties Of publishers, and no newspaper office h the country should be without a copy. Volume Eight contains a number of Negligible Tales" some essays upon l '"rhe Fourth Estate and upon Dancing and "Epigrams. These are told in the sardonic vein | that only MT. Bierce is capable of, and | he treats each subject in a style that ia i absolutely unique-with brevity and wit | and a wonderful clarity of vision.
 There is hardly a subject under the sun i that MT Bierce hasn't touched upon | somewhere in the papers brought out in volumes Nine and Ten, under such | unique titles. as "Tangenital Views" .srhe Opinionator, "The Reviewer" The | Humorous Reporter and The March Hare" Thescssubiects. almost entirely journal fstic hold MT. Bierce as the keen satirist that he is, and the title of Man-of-Let- ters by long odds is conferred upon him in the highest degree.
 The average scribbler couldn't have held our attention with these stories for a noment-their stuff would have been relegated long ago to the rubbish heap of Time"
 In the prose non-iction writings of MT. Bierce, he has assumed that attitude to-
  ters' in them paramount to all captains Of industry and war and commerce. In every page he has added to the dignity of letters and left his imprint upon the reading world.
 His satire and humor, his style and diction rank him among the masters of English, and the new and complete edi- tion of his works will no doubt have the effect of bringing the writings of MT. Ambrose Bierce international renown.
 FIND THE WOMAN
 (By Gelett Burgess. Illustrated by Worth Brehm. The Bobbs-Merrill Co.,, Indianapobs)
 From the Pen of MT. Gelett Burgess whose little quartrain The Purple Cow set the whole United States laughing, one always expects something daringly different and MT. Burgess has yet to dsappoint his readers Everything Ee has ever written contains the flavor cf originality and in his latest book "Find the Woman" he has thrown all the rules of fiction writing to the winds and produced a result so utterly out of