The complete short stories of Ambrose Bierce
Publisher: Doubleday & Company
Published: 1970
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 496
Copyright date: 1970
Description: Collected here, for the first time in a single volume, are all the 93 short stories written by Ambrose Bierce. This brilliant, witty, and often outrageous satirist's talent and stature among American authors are only now becoming fully appreciated; his sometimes bitter cynicism and uncompromising individualism seem even more appropriate to our time than to his own.

The stories, written between 1882 and 1896, when the mature Bierce was at the peak of his narrative powers, fall into three groups:

Tales of the macabre and the supernatural, which use the element of horror to make the satiric point.

Grimly realistic stories of war, emphasizing its brutality and human waste; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamagua" are two well-known works in this vein.

Wildly exaggerated "tall tales" of the type told and retold in the old West, delivering a sharp satiric barb with their free-swinging comedy.

To complete this treasury of Bierce's work, Professor Ernest J. Hopkins has written forewords for each group of stories and an illuminating critical and biographical introduction which shows the remarkable originality, insight, and enduring pertinence of Ambrose Bierce.
--jacket flap
Table of contents: title: INTRODUCTION; title: THE WORLD OF Horror; title: THE WORLD OF war; title: THE WORLD OF Tall Tales