Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Bierce, Ambrose - 1971

Norwalk, Conn.: The Heritage Press, 1971. 222 pp. A collection of twenty-eight short stories by an author who has been described by one critic as "...one of the most interesting and eccentric figures in our literature, one of our great wits, one of most uncompromising satirists, the perfector of two or three new, if minor, genres: a writer one cannot pass by." The current anthology contains short stories first published in 1891 and 1893, selected and with a foreward by Joseph Henry Jackson, and with wood engraved illustrations by noted Californian artist Paul Landacre. The generally misanthropic author, Bierce, escaped from an unhappy childhood by enlisting in the 9th Indiana Infantry during the Civil War. He then travelled widely in the South, and West and later to England. His career as a satiric man of letters grew from humble beginnings as a political cartoonist in San Fransisco, to the editorial chair or columnist at several western newspapers, eventually becoming the Washington correspondent of William Randolph Hearst's New York American in 1896. He famously disappeared in the Mexican desert in 1914. Condition: Near Fine, in Very Good slipcase which shows some shelfwear.. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Very Good.