Product Description

'Nothing is so improbable as what is true' Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later. Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21st June 1842, in Horse Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was the tenth of thirteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. His father, an unsuccessful farmer with an unseemly love of literature, had given all the Bierce children names beginning with 'A'. There was Abigail, the eldest; then Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius etc. So oddness was a part of Bierce's life from the beginning. Poverty and religion of the extreme variety were the two chief influences on young Ambrose's childhood. He not only hated this period of his life, he also developed a deep hatred for his family and this is reflected in some of his stories which depict families preying on and murdering one another. For example the unforgettable opening sentence of An Imperfect Conflagration seems to sum up his bitter attitude: 'Early in 1872 I murdered my father - an act that made a deep impression on me at the time'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13787 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Part of Wordsworth's Mystery & Supernatural series, featuring classic spine chilling tales, some previously unavailable for many years.

Customer Reviews

Witty, articulate and grim
There are more than 50 short stories in this excellent collection. Some are no more than a couple of pages long and few are longer than ten pages. They are full of death, misery and pessimism but somehow manage to be fascinating and enjoyable. The quality of the writing is exceptional and, for the most part, a delight to read. In such a collection there are bound to be a few that won't appeal to everyone and I must admit that there were a couple where the style was a little bit too flowery and convoluted to suit my taste. I prefer a good balance of subtlety, eloquence and simplicity and I estimate that about 95% of these short stories suited this preference exactly. The humour, albeit remorselessly bitter, is irresistible. Bierce seems not to have been a very loveable man, but anyone who loves to read (even those who don't care for the horror genre) could love his writing. You can open the book at any page and reading any passage at random, find a fine collection of beautifully crafted sentences that will practically paint a picture in your mind of a person, scene or situation. It's poetry cobbled into horror.

Highly recommended.

A truely talentent horror writer!
Some of the stories were a bit "samey" and I would suggest reading a handful at a time and perhaps coming back to the book to appreciate them. One story in particular which I found particularly frightening as the description was so vivid was "Chickamauga" - amazing!! Even some of the page-long stories were very well written even though they were only a page!