Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Publication date Usage Public Domain Topics librivox , audiobook , literature , satire , bierce. Ambrose Bierce - ? His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour.
In the Devil's Dictionary, he let his sense of humour and his cynical outlook on life colour a collection of dictionary-like definitions. Summary by Peter For further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats if available , please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
The Devil's Dictionary, begun as a weekly column when Bierce was a journalist, and developed into a full-scale satire, is, as he says, a punishment for rascals. Bierce became known as the 'laughing devil' of the San Francisco news media and his lampoons on religion, marriage, politics and society made him both the literary delight and the dreaded scourge of the whole Pacific coast. Written with wit, rather than humour, to be savoured by those 'enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment', The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary demonstrates that if Mark Twain was the great satirist of Southern life, Ambrose Bierce was his equal in the West.
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? 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. Joshi provides detailed notes and a newly researched chronology of Bierce's life and mysterious disappearance. The Library of America series includes more than volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1, pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in as The Cynic's Word Book, it features Bierce's witty and often ironic spin on many common English words. Retitled in , it has been followed by numerous "unabridged" versions compiled after Bierce's death, which include definitions absent from earlier editions.
The Devil's Dictionary began as a serialized column during Bierce's time as a columnist for the San Francisco News Letter, a small weekly financial magazine founded by Frederick Marriott in the late s. Although a serious magazine aimed at businessmen, the News Letter contained a page of informal satirical content titled "The Town Crier".
Bierce, hired as the "Crier"'s editor in December , wrote satire with such irreverence and lack of inhibition he was nicknamed "the laughing devil of San Francisco".
Bierce resigned from "The Town Crier"[when? Returning to San Francisco in , he made two submissions to the News Letter in hopes of regaining his old position. Both were written under aliases. One, entitled "The Demon's Dictionary", contained Bierce's definitions for 48 words. Later forgotten in his compiling of The Devil's Dictionary, they were added almost a century later to an Enlarged Devil's Dictionary published in Though Bierce's preface to The Devil's Dictionary dates the earliest work to , its origins can be traced to August Short of material and recently possessed of a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, he suggested writing a "comic dictionary" for the "Town Crier".
To a quote from Webster's entry for "Vicegerents", "Kings are sometimes called God's vicegerents", he added the italicized rejoinder, "It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation," then suggested Webster might have used his talent to comic effect. Comic definitions were not a regular feature of Bierce's next column "Prattle", in the magazine The Argonaut, of which he became an editor in March Nevertheless, he included comic definitions in his columns dated November 17, and September 14, It was in early that Bierce first used the title, The Devil's Dictionary, while editor-in-chief of another weekly San Francisco magazine, The Wasp.
The "dictionary" proved popular, and during his time in this post Bierce included 88 installments, each comprising new definitions. This was to be the last of his "dictionary" columns until , and it continued irregularly until July A number of the definitions are accompanied by satiric verses, many of which are signed with comic pseudonyms such as "Salder Bupp", "Orm Pludge", and "Father Gassalasca Jape, S.
The Devils DictionaryBy Ambrose BierceRegarded as one of the most influential American journalists of the late 19th and early 20th century, Ambrose Bierce was the Civil War veteran who was best known for his stories of the American Civil War and for his satirical witticisms.
Written over several decades "The Devil's Dictionary" is the ultimate collection of his lexicon of satirical definitions. Bierce's earliest known definition was first published in Over the next several decades he would add numerous definitions to his satirical essays, in his weekly columns "The Town Crier" and "Prattle", and in his personal letters. These definitions were first collected in book form in as "The Cynic's Word Book" and later expanded as "The Devil's Dictionary" in Not a real dictionary, but rather a lampoon of the English language, "The Devil's Dictionary" provides satirical, witty and often politically pointed representations of the words that it seeks to "define".
This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection.
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