Collected Essays and Journalism, Volume 35: 1906-1912: Edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi

In this final volume of Ambrose Bierce’s essays and journalism, we find the aging author alternating between material contributed to the Cosmopolitan (a magazine recently purchased by William Randolph Hearst) and brief pieces appearing in the New York American. Among the Cosmopolitan pieces are some of his most notable stories (“The Moonlit Road,” “Beyond the Wall,” “A Stranger”), along with a new column, “Small Contribution,” covering a wide range. Bierce’s newspaper work includes frequent installments of “The Cynic’s Dictionary” or “The Cynic’s Word Book,” along with many humorous “Little Johnny” tales, all written in the fractured English of this ill-educated country boy. Previously unknown contributions to the Washington Herald are also included here. Bierce’s work tails off in the period 1910–12, which saw the appearance of only six published items. But by this time Ambrose Bierce had become a towering figure in American literature and journalism, and his complete newspaper and magazine work has waited far too long to appear in book form. Read more