This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.
Contrary to rumor and speculation, Ambrose Bierce was not in league with the devil. Bierce earned the nickname “The Wickedest Man in San Francisco” not by indulging in acts of depravity himself, but by recording the sins and follies of his fellow man. As a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and other newspapers, he heaped scorn upon the scoundrels infesting late nineteenth-century America. Here, in his best work, Bierce relies less on venom than on a wit sharp enough to cut glass. The Devil’s Dictionary is one of the most oft-quoted works in all of American literature. Yet beneath its cynical humor, it remains an unflinchingly honest books about human nature.
About the author
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born into a large family in Ohio and raised on a farm in Indiana. He enlisted in the army in 1861 and his experience in battle laid the foundation for his writing career. After the war he moved to San Francisco and became a journalist. When he retired from writing in 1913, he supposedly left for Mexico but mysteriously disappeared.
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