THE COLLECTED FABLES OF AMBROSE BIERCE

<p>Ambrose Bierce was a well-known and highly admired journalist short story writer and satirist. After distinguished Civil War service Bierce became a journalist and in 1887 he became a columnist for William Randolph Hearst's <i>Sunday Examiner</i>. His work for the San Francisco Examiner made his reputation especially on the West Coast. In 1914 he vanished on a trip to Mexico.</p> <p>The work for which he is best know <i>The Devil's Dictionary</i> was first published in 1906. Bierce also published volumes of short stories. His <i>Tales of Soldiers and Civilians</i> (1891) represents some of the finest writing to come out of the Civil War. Bierce's stories of the supernatural collected in <i>Can Such Things Be?</i> (1893) established him as one of the leading American authors of supernatural fiction.</p> <p>This volume gathers together for the first time the 850 fables written by Bierce over his forty-year career including more than 400 fables never reprinted from the magazines and newspapers in which they originally appeared.</p> <p>Bierce's fables are distinguished for their biting wit and their cynical reflection of the political and social events of his time. Local and national political figures; corrupt lawyers judges and clergymen; and even incidents in the Spanish-American War are all mercilessly lampooned. The fables not only testify to Bierce's hatred of hypocrisy cant and all sham but provide a window into late nineteenth-century American society. S. T. Joshi has provided extensive commentary explaining historical and literary references in the fables.</p>