Any writer of worth, no matter how large or varied his or her literary corpus, typically has a single work that encapsulates precisely his or her worldview and major themes or concerns. That piece may or may not be the writer’s very best performance, but it is the one by which his or her essential thought can be most readily identified. Ambrose Bierce’s “What I Saw of Shiloh” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” may be his greatest works, but The Devil’s Dictionary is quintessential Bierce. In fact, his life and career can be summarized in a single sentence:
Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
There can be no mistaking that this definition, lodged between “Curse” and “Damn” in the first edition of his celebrated dictionary (nestled somewhat innocuously herein between “Custard” and “Dad”), is Bierce’s manifesto; that he defiantly and proudly equates the “blackguard” with himself; and that it is not his vision that is “faulty” but everyone else’s. The coda to the definition— “Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision” —is the purest distillation of his vocation: to sing out the truth, loudly and unflinchingly, no matter the cost. The removal of one’s organs of sight merely thwarts one’s ability to observe firsthand the misdeeds of one’s fellow human beings, who continue to commit the misdeeds. Bierce’s mission was to eradicate the misdeeds.
Bierce was not one to write directly of personal matters in his work. In his later years he penned a few autobiographical sketches, mostly about his Civil War days and other select colorful moments, but he wrote no sustained account of his life, which he considered irrelevant to the evaluation of his work. His entire journalistic corpus can be read as a kind of autobiography—not a detailed chronological record of the primary events of his life, for his life was largely dedicated to the solitary work of writing, but instead a record of the life of the mind. Even such terse, unexplicated statements as dictionary definitions speak volumes about the private dimension of Bierce’s life.
So wherefore The Devil’s Dictionary? Its author, ostensibly Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), said nothing in private correspondence or in print about his purpose or intent in writing it. It was initially published not as a complete (albeit mock) reference book from which bits were occasionally extracted but as a work in progress in irregular installments published in various magazines and newspapers over a period of thirty years. Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary” made its unheralded debut in 1881 along with “Prattle,” his weekly column of miscellaneous commentary, as his first contributions to the San Francisco weekly, the Wasp. In those days Bierce’s work was published mostly unsigned or pseudonymously, but readers recognized the distinctive work of the former “Town Crier” of the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser and the “Prattler” of the Argonaut, so that a byline would have been little more than a formality.
The Devil’s Dictionary may be said ostensibly to be Bierce’s work, because one installment declared it instead to be “one of the most useful works that its author, Dr. John Satan, has ever produced.”1 Could anyone but Satan himself be the author of a “devil’s dictionary”? Possibly. Fundamentalists and literalists believe God to be the author of the Bible. But just as biblical tradition holds that God did not literally put pen to paper to reveal his thought, instead inspiring certain writers to undertake that task, we find that the “writer who evolves this [devil’s] dictionary [is inspired] from an understanding illuminated from Below… by the Personage whose title it bears.”2
The persona Bierce had affected in print since his days as the Town Crier (1868-72)—probably in vehement rebellion against his fundamentalist upbringing—was that of a close partner of Satan, if not Satan himself.3 For two thirds of his career, Bierce tirelessly affected the persona of a demonic journalist.4 His first book, the pseudonymously published The Fiend’s Delight (1873), named for one of Satan’s minions, contains a preface that four decades later could have applied to The Devil’s Dictionary:
The atrocities constituting this “cold collation” of diabolisms are taken mainly from various Californian journals. They are cast in the American language, and liberally enriched with unintelligibility. … In the pursuit of my design I think I have killed a good many people in one way and another; but the reader will please to observe that they are not people worth the trouble of leaving alive. Besides, I had the interests of my collaborator to consult. In writing, as in compiling, I have been ably assisted by my scholarly friend Mr. Satan; and to this worthy gentleman must be attributed most of the views herein set forth. While the plan of the work is partly my own, its spirit is wholly his; and this illustrates the ascendancy of the creative over the merely imitative mind. Palmam qui meruit ferat— I shall be content with the profit.5
The Devil’s Dictionary, regardless of whether Satan composed or inspired it, mockingly celebrates humanity’s proclivity for willfully bending and distorting language to camouflage less than admirable behavior. The lexicographer professes to have compiled a “compendium of everything that is known up to date of its completion,” just as any lexicographer might.6 But whereas we might expect a dictionary to be a useful reference book that enlightens upon each consultation or an authority by which to interpret the meanings of unknown or unfamiliar words, we are warned that this “devil’s dictionary” is likely to produce only gloom.7 Even the staunchest optimist would be unable to disagree with this assessment, for The Devil’s Dictionary is an unrelenting catalog of the moral failings of human beings. It abounds with examples of sin and immorality, egomania, hypocrisy, gross stupidity not only of individuals but also of the human race (at least the American species), fraudulence, intolerance, euphemism, phony gentility, hairsplitting about trivial religious matters, outmoded and useless habits and rites, death and funerary practices, the desire for immortality, deception (often of self), and, perhaps most sadly of all, selfishness. Could such a compendium produce anything but gloom in the reader?
H. P. Lovecraft, who had an uncanny ability to synopsize entire literary careers in a few sentences, remarked insightfully of The Devil’s Dictionary, “That sort of thing wears thin—for when one’s cynicism becomes perfect and absolute, there is no longer anything amusing in the stupidity and hypocrisy of the herd. It is all to be expected—what else could human nature produce? — so irony annuls itself by means of its own victories! Once utterly disillusioned, we turn to the realistic and unhumorous study of the scene in an objectively scientific light, or else weave new and conscious illusions in the spirit of phantasy.”8 True as this statement may be (some of Bierce is, indeed, best taken in small doses), it oversimplifies, as must all such capsule decrees. Bierce did not seek merely to be ironic. As devil’s advocate, his mission was to expose rogues, hypocrites, and fools.
On a superficial level, both Satan and Bierce are opponents of good, but there is one key difference. Bierce was no Boy Scout, but he upheld goodness; what he opposed was the smug, phony brand of goodness espoused by pious hypocrites. When Bierce detected hypocrisy, villainy, and stupidity, he spared no effort to expose and eradicate them and as such may have done more to promote genuinely right behavior than all the pious clerics in California. It was not a matter he approached lightly. Bierce recognized that the religion or moral code claimed in some form or another by virtually the entire Western world for nineteen hundred years had not much improved human behavior. Yet Satan’s collaborator was himself an adherent of the teachings of Christ in a highly individualized way. He once confessed:
This is my ultimate and determining test of right — “What, under the circumstances, would Jesus have done?” —the Jesus of the New Testament, not the Jesus of the commentators, theologians, priests and parsons. The test is perhaps not infallible, but it is excellently simple and gives as good practical results as any. I am not a Christian, but so far as I know, the best and truest and sweetest character in literature, next to Buddha, is that of Jesus Christ. He taught nothing new in goodness, for all goodness was ages old before he came; but with an intuition that never failed he applied to life and conduct the entire law of righteousness. He was a moral lightning calculator:9 to his luminous intelligence the statement of the problem conveyed the solution—he could not hesitate, he seldom erred. That upon his deeds and words was founded a religion which in a debased form persists and even spreads to this day is mere attestation of his marvelous gift: adoration is merely a primitive form of recognition.
It seems a pity that this wonderful man had not a longer life under more complex conditions—conditions more nearly resembling those of the modern world and of the future. One would like to be able to see, through the eyes of his biographers, his genius applied to more and more difficult questions. Yet one can hardly go wrong in inference of his thought and act. In many of the complexities and entanglements of modern affairs it is no easy matter to find an answer off-hand to the question, “What is it right to do?” But put it in another way: “What would Christ have done?” and lo! there is light! Doubt spreads her bat-like wings and is away; the sun of truth springs into the sky, splendoring the path of right and masking that of wrong with a deeper shade.10
Compare to this statement his withering definition of “Christian”: “One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin”;11 or to the Town Crier’s solemnly professed New Year’s resolutions for 1871, suitably tempered so as not to place his goals for self-improvement unrealistically beyond reach:
In deference to a time-worn custom, on the first day of the year the Town Crier swore to, affixed a revenue stamp upon, and recorded the following document: “I do hereby firmly resolve that during one year from date I will not drink any spirituous, vinous or malt liquors of any kind whatsoever, except in case I may think it would be a good thing to temporarily suspend this pledge. I will not utter a profane word—unless in sport—without having been previously vexed at something. I will make use of no tobacco in any of its forms, unless I think it would be kind of nice. I will steal no more than I have actual use for. I will murder no one that does not offend me, except for his money. I will commit highway robbery upon none but small school children, and then only under the stimulus of present or prospective hunger. I will not bear false witness against my neighbor where nothing is to be made by it. I will be as moral and religious as the law shall compel me to be. I will run away with no man’s wife without her full and free consent, and never, no never, so help me heaven! will I take his children along. I won’t write any wicked slanders against anybody, unless by refraining I should sacrifice a good joke. I won’t whip any cripples, unless they come fooling about me when I am busy; and I will give all my roommates’ boots to the poor.12
How, then, to change human behavior? Bierce’s moral yardstick—doing what Christ would do—informs many of the definitions in his dictionary. Some may feel that Bierce’s methods were decidedly un-Christlike, but this is not so. Recall the Christ of the Gospels who tossed the cheating money changers out of the temple (Luke 19:45); who warned, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Luke 6:41); who advised, “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire” (Mark 9:47). Bierce’s method, not entirely unlike Christ’s, was not to mince words but to employ them with some exaggeration or hyperbole if necessary. Perhaps only by being utterly outrageous could he demonstrate that the very opposite of what was said was to be preferred. For example, Bierce recognized that human behavior is a matter of choice, not circumstance. Yet when he solemnly decrees that the modern religion Theosophy holds that “one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become,” he clearly meant that one lifetime is sufficient for any person to become good—if he or she truly desires.13 Bierce knew well that people are neither fated nor forced to be immoral; they choose to be so, just as others choose not to be. Given more time, even more lifetimes, to change themselves would in all likelihood result in no change at all. Thus, The Devil’s Dictionary contains definitions of many terms so commonplace as to need no defining—we all know what the words mean, yet when they are held as an enchanted mirror before the human heart, as in the fable Bierce tells at “Looking-glass,” we are shocked to find that the reflected image is often not what we know we should be seeing. Those content to fool themselves might find Bierce’s trenchant definitions unsettling:
Adore, v. t. To venerate expectantly.
Close-communion, n. The sectarian practice of excluding the Sinners, and several smaller denominations, from the Lord’s supper. The supper being commonly a pretty bad one, no great injustice is done.
Forgiveness, n. A stratagem to throw an offender off his guard and catch him red-handed in his next offense.
Hospitality, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
It was not Bierce’s intent to imply that these concepts are outmoded or irrelevant, merely that they have become so debased and watered down, so perverted, as to mean the opposite of what they once meant, at least as adduced from his observation of human beings. Adoration stripped of the “expectant” component would become real, true adoration. Hospitality extended to persons other than one’s relatives or cronies would be real, true hospitality. It is not Bierce’s definitions that are perverted, as is often charged, but the human tendency not only to turn one’s head from what was once unacceptable but then to make it acceptable by labeling it with an agreeable term—to define “black” as “white.”
The Devil’s Dictionary is a mocking and damning assessment of the condition of the human heart. An exhaustive catalog could be prepared of the vocabulary of sin employed in The Devil’s Dictionary, but let us be content to point out but a few of numerous references to the seven deadly sins:14
Numerous transgressions subordinate to these most deadly sins are represented as well; in fact, this unique dictionary explores at considerable length the underworld of sin and impenitence.
And yet, as with all great satire, The Devil’s Dictionary is much more than a witty condemnation of iniquity. One could call it, not unreasonably, a manual for good behavior.15 Just as C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters document the devil Screwtape’s sage advice to his nephew Wormwood, a neophyte, on how to succeed at deviltry, his very words can also urge the receptive human reader to the exact opposite (and the author’s desired) behavior.
Bierce’s affinity for cynical lexicography became apparent long before the first installment of “The Devil’s Dictionary” appeared in the Wasp. One of his very earliest published pieces, the essay “Concerning Tickets,” contains a satiric definition of the term “San Francisco lady” (hardly the sort of expression that would be found in a real dictionary), attributed to “Some astute philosopher with a penchant for definition.”16 This fledgling bit of lexicography was a bit awkward, but it showed that Bierce could capably turn a phrase. Before long he was writing for a weekly paper, the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser. It was in the News Letter that Bierce explored and then began to hone virtually all his chief media for self-expression: fictional sketches, aphorisms, poems, fables, tall tales, fictitious letters, futuristic commentaries, essays, imaginary dialogues, and, of course, mock dictionary definitions. Perhaps Bierce could not manage longer forms, or perhaps he did not find them conducive to his satiric method. Either way, he excelled at satire in miniature, which was well suited to a journalist who needed steadily to produce great quantities of varied and engaging material.
Bierce took over the News Letter’s famous “Town Crier” column in December 1868, and it served as his chief sounding board for the duration of his tenure. The column comprised short, tart, and unflinchingly barbed commentary on doings in San Francisco and on notices culled from papers published around the country. Bierce included only a few definitions in “The Town Crier,” tidbits lodged deeply within columns running from 2,500 to nearly 3,000 words. On one occasion, he published a separate item called “Webster Revised” that consisted of four satirical definitions.17 This unsigned piece is indisputably his, for several of the jokes in it were represented later in The Devil’s Dictionary. Another piece, “‘News Letter’ Aphorisms—By Our Special Philosopher,” contained the first of several definitions formed as theoretical situations in which the characters are not expressed by name but merely by letters.18
The notion of an entire dictionary of such definitions is broached in an early “Town Crier,” where Bierce wrote:
We have frequent occasion to rebuke our neighbors of the press for their weak attempts to imitate our style, but until yesterday it never entered our head that we should have to take an eminently respectable lexicographer to task for the same amiable weakness. But there is no betting on the undeviating hard sense of anybody, and the lexicographic mind is a merely human affair and will occasionally cut its caper. Observe this, from Webster’s latest and biggest: “VICEREGENT, n. [L. vicem regens, acting in the place of another.] A lieutenant; a vicar; an officer who is deputed by a superior or by proper authority to exercise the powers of another. Kings are sometimes called God’s viceregents. It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation.”19 Could any one but an American humorist ever have conceived the idea of a Comic Dictionary?20 It is mournful to think what a fame Noah Webster might have acquired had his genius not been diverted into a philological channel.21
Bierce then largely ignored the dictionary definition as a satiric medium until he returned from his period of journeyman’s work in England from 1872 to 1875.
Bierce’s last work published in London before he returned to the United States appeared in September 1875. Nothing by him is known to have been published in the United States following his return until the appearance of two items in the News Letter for 11 December 1875: a letter attributed to one “Theophilus Smallbeer” and a piece entitled “The Demon’s Dictionary.” The latter item consisted of forty-eight brief definitions, satiric in nature, beginning with the letter A—“The first letter in every properly constructed alphabet”—and ending with “Accoucheur.” Bierce’s biographer Carey McWilliams declared that “The Demon’s Dictionary” “ran for only a few issues,” but no other appearances have been found, and it is unlikely that more than one installment appeared.22 Although “The Demon’s Dictionary” is unsigned and although Bierce included none of its definitions in The Devil’s Dictionary, it can be ascribed to Bierce based on a fair amount of internal evidence.23 The most obvious is the definition of “Abatis,” which is virtually identical to Bierce’s definition of the term in his pseudonymous book, Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874). However, many other examples show clearly that the similarities between terms in “The Demon’s Dictionary” and later definitions of the same words known to be by Bierce are not merely coincidental. Bierce used satiric definitions only sporadically during his tenure as the Prattler at the Argonaut, and it was not until 1881, following an unsuccessful stint as general agent for the Black Hills Placer Mining Company in the Dakota Territory, that he unleashed one of his longest running features in his very first appearance in the Wasp.
There has been considerable confusion about the actual inception of “The Devil’s Dictionary.” Biographer Carey McWilliams wrote: “It was in January of that year [1881] that it [the Wasp] began to publish the first of his work, part of ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ … With the first issue of the Wasp, he began the publication of this dictionary of wit, beginning with the letter ‘P,’ and continued down the alphabet until March 5th, 1881, when he started the dictionary all over again, apparently with the thought in mind of rewriting and enlarging the original plan.”24 Ernest J. Hopkins repeats this in his Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary (1967). The unsigned column to which McWilliams and Hopkins refer, dated 1 January 1881 (two months before Bierce’s tenure with the Wasp began), is “Wasp’s Improved Webster: In Ten-Cent Doses.” They claim that Bierce somewhat illogically launched his column, beginning with the letter P—more specifically, with the word “Pluck.” It is then supposed that “Wasp’s Improved Webster” lasted only six installments through 5 February, ending with the word “Rye,”25 and that after a month’s hiatus, Bierce resumed publishing dictionary definitions beginning on 5 March, now calling the column “The Devil’s Dictionary” and restarting at a logical beginning, with words beginning with the letter A.
The simple fact is that “Wasp’s Improved Webster” had been running in the Wasp since 7 August 1880 (issue no. 210). The appearance of the P through R items in early 1881 was merely part of the ongoing sequence. In a letter to S. O. Howes, an admirer to whom Bierce lent his files of his published work, Bierce wrote: “By the way, please give me the date at which I began it [“The Devil’s Dictionary”] in the Wasp—at A. Salmi Morse had something like it going when I took the editorship.”26 Thus, Bierce did not inexplicably start his column midway through the letter P, stop, and recommence at A. The work was not his. Bierce resumed exactly where he left off five years before, for the first word he defined under “The Devil’s Dictionary” was “Accuracy,” a logical successor to “Accoucheur” from “The Demon’s Dictionary.”
“The Devil’s Dictionary” began as many new projects do, with energy and enthusiasm. The column ran for twelve weeks from 5 March until 21 May, the single longest unbroken stretch in its six-year history. The inaugural column contained twenty-four definitions, more than any future installment. As Bierce’s duties at the Wasp increased, he found himself with less time to devote to “The Devil’s Dictionary,”27 but the column continued, if sporadically, until Bierce left the paper in 1886. Between 1882 and 1884, Bierce published only twenty-one “Devil’s Dictionary” columns, fewer than the twenty-five published in all of 1881. There were breaks ranging from fifteen weeks to as long as thirty-two weeks between columns. In one period of fifty-seven weeks, Bierce published only three installments. The column regained some of its initial vitality in 1885, when twenty-seven installments appeared, usually with only one- to three-week separations. But in 1886 the column appeared only six times, and before year’s end Bierce had resigned from the Wasp, the final definition published being “Lickspittle.”
Like all Bierce’s other writings, the definitions in “The Devil’s Dictionary” encompass a mélange of rhetorical styles, all clearly in the voice of their author. Some are written, albeit tongue-in-cheek, in a serious lexicographical style. Some are homiletic, using the rhetorical language of preachers. Some are written in dialect, some in the owlish manner of scholars and scientists. Others unabashedly stoop to the level of corny puns or one-liners. And some contain pedantic, even schoolmarmish instruction against the sins of grammatical abuse. Most of the definitions are general enough to be timeless, but many are aimed at the local events and personages of Bierce’s day. He relentlessly lampooned local politicians, clerics, poetasters, and poseurs. When Bierce eventually compiled a book of his definitions, he simply changed the names of the guilty to those who would be recognized by a broader audience.
The work showcases not only Bierce’s considerable erudition but also his ability to feign erudition. The definitions contain numerous literary, biblical, and scientific allusions. Many of the illustrative quotations and poems are clever parodies of well-known writers and their work: Pope, Byron, Tennyson, Gray, Longfellow, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Burns, to name only a few. Bierce also fabricated illustrative stories that sound like genuinely researched history that mocked persistent legends, as seen in the definitions for “Fairy,” “Ghoul,” “Gnome,” and “Reliquary.”
For the most part, the definitions appeared in continuous alphabetical sequence, despite lapses in time between columns. Definitions sometimes appeared out of sequence; that is, a definition that logically belonged in a certain column might instead appear in the subsequent installment, as if it were inserted as an afterthought. One particularly drastic exception occurred following the extraordinarily long hiatus of thirty-two weeks between 6 October 1883 and 17 May 1884. The definitions published on 17 and 24 May 1884 should have appeared among those in the four columns prior to 6 October 1883, that is, 23 December 1882 and 17 February, 10 March, and 28 April 1883. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Bierce chose to redefine the words “Elysium,” “Embalm,” “Envy,” “Epicure,” “Epigram,” “Epitaph,” “Esteem,” “Ethnology,” “Eucalyptus,” “Euphemism,” and “Excommunication.” One might assume that the reason for the long lapses in appearances of “The Devil’s Dictionary” between 1883 and 1884 was that Bierce had tired of it, or that he felt his definitions had begun to sag, and that after some time away from them he resumed with new vigor, rewriting definitions with which he was dissatisfied. But this scenario is unlikely, for it seems that Bierce ultimately favored the initial versions of the respective definitions, as nearly all of the rewritten terms were passed over when Bierce compiled the book versions of his dictionary.
When Bierce stopped writing for the Wasp, he did not remain unemployed for long. His celebrated tenure with William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner began quietly in February 1887 with some unsigned editorials, but on 27 March “Prattle” reappeared, and since Bierce’s addition to the Examiner was intended to attract readers, it was published with his byline, as was all his feature writing for Hearst. Bierce steadily filled the editorial page with copy. His weekly “Prattle” was supplemented by installments of fables, essays, reminiscences, poems, “Little Johnny” sketches, and unsigned editorials. Elsewhere in the Examiner his fiction began to appear regularly. But it was not until 4 September 1887 that his dictionary definitions resumed, albeit briefly, on the Sunday edition’s editorial page as “The Cynic’s Dictionary,” with the all but invisible tagline “B.” As with the transition from “The Demon’s Dictionary” to “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Bierce continued where he had stopped previously at the Wasp, resuming with the word “Life,” as though loyal followers of his work were eagerly awaiting the next installment, despite a change of publishers, a hiatus between appearances, and even a change in the column’s title. But it was nearly eight months before Bierce published another installment on 29 April 1888, and then the column was mysteriously discontinued for more than sixteen years.
Bierce never explained why “The Cynic’s Dictionary” resumed so fitfully in the Examiner nor why it was so unimaginatively renamed. Although Hearst gave Bierce virtually a free rein with all his other work for the Examiner, presumably it was Hearst himself or his editors who censored the title “The Devil’s Dictionary,” as did the publisher of the first book collection of the definitions. As Bierce later acknowledged to George Sterling, “They (the publishers) won’t have ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ Here in the East the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity, as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.”28
By the time Bierce next resumed “The Cynic’s Dictionary” in July 1904, his work had been appearing regularly in the Examiner and the New York American, a paper Hearst had acquired in 1895, when it was the New York Journal. His audience now was much larger than San Francisco alone, and so he needed to make his work less parochial. Perhaps for that reason, along with the column’s absence for sixteen long years, Bierce sought to reinaugurate his column properly by beginning with the letter A. In the new “Cynic’s Dictionary,” Bierce eschewed humorous definitions of obscure words as had appeared in the “The Demon’s Dictionary,” redefined some words that had been treated nearly thirty years previously, and wrote entirely new definitions. But after two consecutive columns of A definitions, Bierce halted briefly, then unaccountably resumed with the word “Ma,” the point at which he had ceased in April 1888. The jarring manner in which Bierce resumed publishing his definitions could not have escaped general notice. George Sterling wrote to Bierce, “Please tell me if in the ‘Cynic’s Dictionary’ you ‘jumped’ from A to M. Otherwise the ‘Examiner’ is buncoing me.”29 Bierce explained less than helpfully: “Yes, in The Cynic’s Dictionary I did ‘jump’ from A to M. I had previously done the stuff in various papers as far as M, then lost the beginning. So in resuming I re-did that part (quite differently, of course) in order to have the thing complete if I should want to make a book of it. I guess the Examiner isn’t running much of it, nor much of anything of mine.”30 Quite simply, he ended with “Accuse,” the word that follows the very first word that appeared in the Wasp. Bierce wrote a batch of definitions to account for A words up to the word “Accuracy,” thereby replacing with rewritten or new definitions those contained in “The Demon’s Dictionary,” almost as though he needed to reconstruct the opening pages of his dictionary.31
The resumption of “The Cynic’s Dictionary” in 1904 appears to have been the result of discussion the previous year among Bierce and his protégés about possible publication of his definitions as a book. Bierce wrote to Herman Scheffauer, “No, I have not enough ‘epigrams and aphorisms’ for a book—at least not without going through a mess of other stuff—principally my ‘Devil’s Dictionary’, which I want to keep intact in the hope that some publisher of the future may happen to take a fancy to it. It is a trifle less unwitty than anything else I’ve written, and more lively than a whole book of mere epigrams can be—even a small book.”32 Later he commented,
I’ll bet a pretty penny that not a publisher on this side of the continent will look at the stuff unless I will give it another title. It is ready for compilation, but not compiled. It will consist of definitions (somewhat original) of such words that struck my fancy, regularly arranged as in a real dictionary. Some of the definitions stand alone, some are followed by a few lines of illustration or comment, some run to the length of small essays. Many are in verse or partly in verse—a bit cynical.
I shall compile it next winter and that, doubtless, will be the end o’ it. My intention, by the way, is a secret known (now) to you only. Keep it, please.33
Bierce’s admonition to Scheffauer went unheeded, for in October Sterling wrote to Bierce, “If you’ll get your ‘Devil’s Dictionary’ ready I’ll try to get it published by next Spring, if you care to have me do so. That title alone would sell anything. Sheff. [sic] mentioned it to me in ignorance of your wish to keep it a secret; but I’ll not let it go farther.”34 Sterling and Scheffauer had, earlier in 1903, arranged for the publication of Bierce’s Shapes of Clay through W. E. Wood of San Francisco. Bierce was embarrassed that they had done so, for they published the book at their own expense. He did not wish to see the situation repeated.
Although Bierce had stated that he had abundant material on hand to prepare a book of definitions, he instead resumed publishing, and presumably writing, definitions for “The Cynic’s Dictionary.” Between July 1904 and January 1905 he published twenty-five installments, running well through the letter P. The reason for renewed activity is not clear, but perhaps it lay in Bierce’s growing dissatisfaction with Hearst’s editors. To Robert Mackay, editor of the magazine Success, Bierce wrote, “Just now I’m making one of my periodical attempts to release my leg from the ‘Oregon boot’ of yellow journalism. If successful I shall apply a match to every river in the country and bask in the light and heat of a restored public attention.”35 New installments of his dictionary would certainly restore the attention he desired, for as Bierce pointed out, his material was popular (and controversial) enough that it was now being plagiarized and imitated. After the first two weeks, the appearances were not limited to only one per week, as they had been even after he stopped writing for the Wasp, and the installments published in San Francisco did not always appear on the same day as or even lag at the same rate behind the appearances in New York. Some columns never appeared in the San Francisco paper. But after January 1905 the column again went into hiatus, now for more than a year. Bierce wrote wistfully to S. O. Howes, “I’m working rather hard these days—at work that is mere pot-boiling; so ‘The Cynic’s Dictionary,’ which you are good enough to care for, has gone out of commission.”36
Not long thereafter, Bierce wrote to Robert Mackay, “I thank you for your offer to publish ‘The Cynic’s Dictionary’ — or, as it used to be entitled in California, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ There are two objections. First, it is not completed and I cannot now work upon it. (As it is not intended for a comprehensive wordbook of the language that is perhaps unimportant—there’s plenty for one volume, and another could follow if the first should succeed.) Second, it would not succeed—you would lose money on it. I don’t profess to know that; it is what I think.”37 Nevertheless, by 10 November Bierce was writing to Howes that he was “now compiling” The Cynic’s Dictionary at the request of Doubleday, Page and Company. The nature of the manuscript is not known, but its sources are clear enough. It consists largely of selections from his “Devil’s Dictionary” columns from the Wasp, as they covered the letters A through L, but it also contains many of the new A definitions of 1904 and the L definitions of 1887 and 1888. Bierce completed his work by mid-January 1906. He did not at that time intend to publish a comprehensive dictionary covering the entire alphabet. He wrote to Howes, “I have all the stuff from ‘A’ forward … though in the manner of publishers they want some alterations made—as if I had not made enough! We may split on that question, or on that of title. I’ve selected none, finally, and they have suggested an impossible one— ‘A Few Definitions.’ The idea!”38 The following month he wrote to Howes, “I’ve supplied Doubleday, Page & Co., with the typoscript [sic] of ‘The Cynic’s Dictionary’ (the first volume, A-F) and signed a contract for its publication.”39 Ultimately, the book contained definitions through the letter L. By May the book was “a-printing,” and Bierce began reading proofs.
Shortly after Bierce submitted the manuscript of his book to Doubleday, “The Cynic’s Dictionary” once again resumed publication in the newspapers. Four installments appeared under that title between 22 February and 11 April in the New York American; only three of these appeared in the Examiner.40 After another lull, the column resumed from late May at least until mid-July, but now under the title “The Cynic’s Word Book” to correspond with the title of the book to be published in October. As Bierce told George Sterling, “I shall have to call it something else, for the publishers tell me there is a ‘Cynic’s Dictionary’ already out. I dare say the author took more than my title—the stuff has been a rich mine for a plagiarist for many a year.”41 The last appearance of Bierce’s column ended with the word “Reconciliation.”42 No further installments of Bierce’s satiric definitions appeared in the newspapers.
Bierce stated that the reason The Cynic’s Word Book contained words only through the letter L was that if the book sold well, then a second volume with the balance of the alphabet would be published. But the book did not sell well, as hinted by the brusque statement from a letter to Sterling: “The other half of the ‘Devil’s Dictionary’ is in the fluid state—not even liquid. And so, doubtless, it will remain.”43 Bierce soured on nearly all his current prospective publishing ventures. He could not find publishers for his collection of political satires, The Fall of the Republic, which he considered his finest work, or a collection of his Little Johnny sketches. His growing frustration with Hearst’s editors caused him more than once to resign, though he was always persuaded to return. Hearst was content to publish Bierce in Cosmopolitan, and Bierce attempted to satisfy Hearst by writing for the magazine from 1905 into 1909; but Bierce was unable to deal effectively with the editors and resigned for good in 1909. The only books of Bierce’s to be published during this frustrating time were the collection of his journalism, The Shadow on the Dial, culled by S. O. Howes from various of Bierce’s columns, and the inconsequential Write It Right.
In May 1908 Bierce’s friend and publisher Walter Neale began to broach the possibility of publishing Bierce’s collected works in ten volumes.44 Bierce was not optimistic about the prospects of such an undertaking, but Neale was willing to take the risk, and by June Bierce had signed a contract. With Bierce’s assistance, Neale wrote a thirty-two-page prospectus for the project.45 The plan initially was to publish two volumes a year. The first six volumes consisted primarily of material that Bierce had previously published or already compiled. The first volume consisted of what Bierce considered to be his finest work—his recollections of his Civil War days and his long political satires—and he wisely chose to publish that material first in the event that the project did not see completion. Subsequent volumes consisted of his two collections of fiction, two volumes of verse, Fantastic Fables, and the joint translation with Gustav Adolphe Danziger of The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter. The published material was not entirely ready-made, for Bierce extensively revised the organization, content, and text of the books. His selection of The Devil’s Dictionary as volume 7 bears out his feeling that the book was merely “a trifle less unwitty” than some of his other work.
With The Devil’s Dictionary, work on the Collected Works became more complicated and difficult. For the most part, the book was founded on The Cynic’s Word Book. Bierce took a copy of that book and marked revisions on the printed pages. His revisions are light, and he did not attempt to restore to their previous state definitions that he had revised to accommodate Doubleday. He excised a few, added some, and moved others to the back half of the manuscript under different headings for balance. Because The Cynic’s Word Book ended with the letter L, Bierce had to compile the entire remainder of the book. The definitions for the letters L through R derive primarily from his more recent dictionary columns in the Examiner (1887-88) and the American (1904-06).46 The thirty-seven pages of the typesetting copy following the revised pages of The Cynic’s Word Book consist almost entirely of clippings from newspapers, lightly revised. Still, this reached only partly through the letter R, to the word “Reconciliation.” The typesetting copy concludes with a seventy-two-page typescript of mostly new, unpublished material. These pages also contain several clippings from Bierce’s newspaper work, used to illustrate certain definitions.
It is not known how Bierce had prepared his material for publication in the newspapers, but it appears that he prepared copy somewhat ahead of time, and it was used as necessary to fill space.47 However, it is unlikely that Bierce had anything prepared beyond the last appearance of “The Cynic’s Word Book” in the American in 1906, and so he had to compose new definitions for the letters R through Z. There is considerable evidence to show this. In the first place, most of the illustrative verses in the typescript had been previously published in his newspaper columns or separately.48 Second, many of the late definitions derive from other previously published sources, chiefly from Bierce’s editorials from 1903 through 1905. One additional clue to the method in which he prepared The Devil’s Dictionary is given in an envelope among the Bierce papers at the Bancroft Library that contains fifty clippings labeled “From which to select and prepare additions to ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ if needed” (see Appendix, “Supplemental Definitions”). These consist of twelve complete definitions from “The Devil’s Dictionary” in the Wasp, but primarily of extracts of verse or text from Bierce’s columns. These latter are not definitions but most likely text to be used to illustrate new definitions. Of the items not from “The Devil’s Dictionary,” all but nine are labeled as to the definition for which they might be used. The number of items in the envelope originally contained is not known, but it is likely that the envelope yielded some of the definitions added to the book at the proof stage.49
Publication of The Devil’s Dictionary —indeed, the whole of The Collected Works— was an arduous undertaking. Bierce continually complained to Neale about the typesetter’s work. The published book does contain numerous typographical errors, many of which were never corrected in subsequent editions of the book. A particularly vexing problem for Bierce was getting the word “Hades” to be set correctly in Greek. Despite corrected second proofs, the printed version was still incorrect. The worst defect by far occurred in the printing of the R definitions, which are inexplicably out of order, until one consults the typesetting copy and sees that the clippings for those words are pasted up in exactly the order printed. Despite Bierce’s instruction to the typesetter to put all definitions in alphabetical order, regardless of their location in the manuscript, it appears that Bierce and his assistant, Carrie Christiansen, failed to rectify the improper alphabetization of the definitions in the proofs.
The Devil’s Dictionary probably achieved even less notice than The Cynic’s Word Book. Because The Collected Works was sold as a set to subscribers, The Devil’s Dictionary could not be obtained separately. Reviewers of The Collected Works tended wearily to address several books at a time. A brief review of four volumes of The Collected Works in the New York Times did not even mention that one of the four books under consideration was The Devil’s Dictionary. In fact, it appears that the reviewer mistakenly thought it a volume of Bierce’s “collected epigrams.”50 The reviewer in the Athenaum likewise reviewed four volumes at once but devoted considerable space to The Devil’s Dictionary. Like H. P. Lovecraft, the reviewer noted that “a sameness in the intention tends to tire, especially when it is ill-intention,” but this is a bit unfair, as few people read any dictionary cover to cover. The reviewer perceptively observed that “dealing with a wide range of topics as well as a great number of words, it presents a sort of summary index of the author’s characteristic views as well as his literary aptitudes and poses. … Sometimes irony sophisticated and ponderous is conjoined with fun of a more simple sort. … We discover frankness, and the humility of true learning.” The reviewer also recognized the antipodal effects that a definition could have on different readers: “Those to whom the term applies [“Jealous” is cited specifically] may find either consolation or rebuke.”51 Bierce seemed underwhelmed when he passed the review along to Walter Neale, writing: “As is my habit in the case of’The Athenaeum’, I submit its final remarks. On the whole, I think that it has treated us pretty decently.”52 Before long, both The Devil’s Dictionary and its compiler had disappeared from the public eye.
It was not until Albert and Charles Boni reprinted The Devil’s Dictionary in 1925 and again in 1926, during the first brief Bierce renaissance, that the book began to attract attention. It was the new printings of The Devil’s Dictionary that caught the eye of not only H. P. Lovecraft’s young correspondent but also H. L. Mencken, who wrote that it contains “some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language.”53 The Boni brothers brought out two more printings in 1935 and 1936, and many other editions were published by others. In his introduction to the Hill and Wang edition of the dictionary, Carey McWilliams’s enthusiastic account of his discovery of Bierce must be typical of the new generation of readers encountering Bierce for the first time in the mid-1920s:
The Devil’s Dictionary provides perhaps the best introduction to the man and his work; at least it proved so for me. One day many years ago—I was a freshman in college at the time—I was prowling through the open stacks of the Los Angeles Public Library when I came by chance on the massive Collected Works. Bierce’s name meant nothing to me then except that I had seen some references to his writings in Mencken’s Smart Set. The first volume I pulled down from the shelf was The Devil’s Dictionary. By the time I found my way to a table, reading all the while, I was “hooked” — nor has time diminished my enthusiasm for Bierce. Those of Bierce’s readers who have “discovered” his writings in much this same fortuitous manner—and I suspect that they constitute a majority—will appreciate that this was quite an experience for me; then as now Bierce is an impressive figure to come upon by chance.54
The Devil’s Dictionary and its compiler have outlasted and surpassed the cheap, popular imitators of their day and in fact inspired a new host of imitators whose skill sadly does not match their admiration for the master lexicographer. By 1927 H. P. Lovecraft could state authoritatively, as he was inclined to do, “Ambrose Bierce, almost unknown in his own time, has now reached something like general recognition.”55 To be sure, Lovecraft was writing of Bierce’s Civil War and weird fiction, but The Devil’s Dictionary contributes much to that recognition. Many definitions in the dictionary have become standard, and the work is now an American classic. It is hoped that this “unabridged” edition will serve to broaden its appeal.
The purpose of The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary, as implied by the title, is to present all of Bierce’s known satirical definitions. The notion is not new. Ernest J. Hopkins attempted the same in his Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary (1967), but that edition omitted some definitions and included nearly two hundred that are spurious.
In an age in which books based upon “auctorial intent” are flourishing, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary is something of an anomaly. The works of authors restored to their state of auctorial intent are generally of a piece; they do not sprawl over a period of composition of nearly forty years or consist of many hundreds of discrete components. Bierce’s intentions for such a book cannot be known, considering the differing constraints under which he edited the edition of 1911 and its predecessor, The Cynic’s Word Book. Surely Bierce would not have indiscriminately reprinted every definition he had written over thirty-five years, even without restrictions on space; nor would he have reprinted every definition as initially written, even without restriction on content. In the work at hand, the careful reader will detect unevenness of style and polish, grammatical errors or usages that the older Bierce would have expunged, and perhaps some items that the author, exercising more critical judgment than the editors, would have left unreprinted. Nevertheless, every attempt has been made to adhere closely to Bierce’s plan as evidenced in The Devil’s Dictionary. The restoration of uncollected definitions and the inclusion of select early versions will shed light upon Bierce’s compositional and revisory practices.
The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) and the typesetting copy for the book are the foundation for this new edition. All definitions from the 1911 edition are included as published with only minor modifications, primarily corrections of typographical errors. They are supplemented with uncollected definitions from the following sources: (I) the single appearance of “The Demon’s Dictionary” (1875); (2) installments of “The Devil’s Dictionary” from the Wasp (1881-86); (3) installments of “The Cynic’s Dictionary” (later “The Cynic’s Word Book”) from the New York American (1904-06) and the San Francisco Examiner (1887-88; 190406); (4) The Cynic’s Word Book (1906); (5) the typesetting copy for The Devil’s Dictionary; and (6) a proof for a single definition for which no published appearance has been found. No manuscripts of these items save (5) are known to exist.
Uncollected definitions are included as found with only minor editorial revision to bring them into conformity with Bierce’s own practice in preparing The Devil’s Dictionary. Such revisions include regularizing the abbreviations used for parts of speech, not italicizing the word defined when it appears in verse or text examples, using Bierce’s manner of punctuation in all notes of attribution following verse and text, using a uniform style to indicate cross-references, omitting serial commas, and so on. No attempt is made to apply Bierce’s later stylistic preferences to his early work, for example, correcting split infinitives, as he always did.
A very few items have been omitted because of duplication, for reasons identified in the notes, but always in adherence to Bierce’s wishes. For example, the verses that appeared with the definition “Cackle” in its appearances in the Wasp and The Cynic’s Word Book are not printed here because in The Devil’s Dictionary Bierce used them with the definition “Vanity”; thus the definition for “Cackle” is restored, but without the verses. In the case of “Aversion,” Bierce simply renamed it “Satiety.” Thus, the entire definition is not restored at “Aversion.”
In cases where Bierce defined words more than once and published the definitions separately over time, the definitions are grouped under a single heading, each labeled with numbers in square brackets (see, for example, “Abatis”); numbers not in brackets are Bierce’s own. Definitions that appeared in The Devil’s Dictionary are preferentially given first; if no definition appeared in the book, multiple definitions of a given word are listed chronologically.
1. In “Dictionary” as it appeared in W (24 May 1882).
2. In “Immoral” as it appeared in W (12 Sept. 1885).
3. AB began his diabolical career as a “printer’s devil” for a local newspaper when he was fifteen.
4. He never tired of it. As late as 1891, when AB was writing for the Examiner, he published a regular feature in the Wasp titled “Social Chatter” as written by “Satanella.” He seemed quite eager to have The Devil’s Dictionary published under his preferred title after suffering more than twenty years with the bland substitute “The Cynic’s Dictionary.”
5. “Dod Grile,” in FD (London: John Camden Hotten, [1873]), [7].
6. In “Dictionary” as it appeared in W (24 May 1882).
7. See both “Depression” and “Gloom.”
8. H. P. Lovecraft to August W. Derleth [late Jan. 1928] (ALS, State Historical Society of Wisconsin). AB ultimately turned to both alternatives.
9. See “Prattle,” W (15 Sept. 1883): 5.
10. “Religion,” CW 11. 225-26 (this extract dates to 2 June 1891).
11. In the verses published with this definition in D, Christ vehemently asserts that he is no Christian and is insulted to be mistaken for one.
12. “The Town Crier,” NL (7 Jan. 1871): 9. Note also AB’s several “revised” versions of the Ten Commandments (s.v. “Decalogue,” for example).
13. See “Theosophy.”
14. Considering that the majority of the definitions appeared in the weekly magazine the Wasp, it is somewhat ironic that the mnemonic device students were once urged to employ to remember the seven deadly sins was the anagram “wasp leg.”
15. Cf. [unsigned,] “A Cynic’s Word Book: Some New Definitions,” T.P.’s Weekly, no. 244 (12 July 1907: 51): “Many of my readers will find amusement and even instruction in ‘The Cynic’s Word Book.’”
16. “A. Gwinnett,” Californian 7, no. 32 (Dec. 1867): 8. See Appendix B, item B1, for text. In AB’s earliest writings he posed as a philosopher.
17. NL (30 Jan. 1869): 3. See Appendix B, item B3.
18. NL (24 July 1869) : 4. This unsigned item is known to be by AB because it contains material later reprinted in CW.
19. Noah Webster (1758-1843), An American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 2 (New York: S. Converse, 1828). AB quotes the text verbatim, although the emphasis is his. He apparently was unaware that this definition was written by Webster himself for the first edition of the dictionary, not by a subsequent reviser.
20. Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, written between 1850 and 1855; first published in 1913 (translated as Dictionary of Accepted Ideas [1954]). The work is more a collection of clichés than a comic lexicon.
21. “The Town Crier,” NL (14 Aug. 1869): II.
22. More recently, Roy Morris Jr. has stated that more installments of “The Demon’s Dictionary” appeared not only in NL but also in Fu, but this has not been found to be the case.
23. Possibly because he had no record of this early piece. See p. xix and n. 30.
24. Carey McWilliams, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1929), 154-55. By “first issue,” McWilliams means the first issue containing AB’s writing, for the paper had been appearing since 1876.
25. Ernest J. Hopkins included the 189 definitions from these six columns in his Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary (1967).
26. AB to S. O. Howes, 19 Jan. 1906 (ALS, Huntington Library and Art Gallery). AB’s emphasis of the word “I” suggests that Howes may have made the same mistake made by McWilliams and Hopkins—of assuming that Morse’s “Webster” definitions were AB’s. AB must have lent Howes his bound copies of the Wasp. The volume for the first six months of 1881 contained issues for January through February, when AB was not yet writing for the Wasp.
27. From 1883 to 1885, Bierce was writing not only his “Prattle” and other pieces but also the paper’s editorial column.
28. AB to George Sterling, 6 May 1906 (ALS, NYPL). AB lived in Washington, D.C., from 1900 onward.
29. George Sterling to AB, 10 Sept. 1904 (ALS, NYPL).
30. AB to George Sterling, 5 Oct. 1904 (TLS, NYPL).
31. AB probably did not repudiate “The Demon’s Dictionary” of 1875 but lost it, as suggested in his letter to George Sterling of 5 Oct. 1904. In saying he “re-did” the early A definitions, AB hints that “The Demon’s Dictionary” was indeed his, for he redid none of the A work from the Wasp.
32. AB to Herman Scheffauer, 12 Sept. 1903 (transcript, Bancroft Library).
33. AB to Herman Scheffauer, 27 Sept. 1903 (transcript, Bancroft Library).
34. George Sterling to AB, 10 Oct. 1903 (ALS, NYPL).
35. AB to Robert Mackay, 25 Apr. 1904 (ALS, Harvard).
36. AB to S. O. Howes, 18 Feb. 1905 (ALS, Huntington Library and Art Gallery).
37. AB to Robert Mackay, 10 Mar. 1905 (ALS, Library of Congress).
38. AB to S. O. Howes, 3 Mar. 1906 (ALS, Huntington Library and Art Gallery).
39. AB to S. O. Howes, 5 Apr. 1906 (ALS, Huntington Library and Art Gallery).
40. Appearances also have been found in the Los Angeles Examiner, and it is likely that “The Cynic’s Word Book” also appeared in other of Hearst’s papers.
41. AB to George Sterling, 6 May 1906 (ALS, NYPL). AB refers to Harry Thompson (1867-?), The Cynic’s Dictionary (Philadelphia: H. Altemus Co., 1905). Thompson did not plagiarize any of AB’s work, but the nature of his definitions occasionally resembles AB’s.
42. The dates of the last two columns are unknown. The typesetting copy contains clippings of two installments published sometime after the last appearance that can be dated (Am, 11 July 1906).
43. AB to George Sterling, [18 Aug. 1907] (ALS, NYPL).
44. Twelve volumes ultimately were published. Neale had republished Can Such Things Be? (1893) in 1903 and The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter (1892) in 1907 and later published Write It Right (1909), initially intended for but ultimately excluded from CW.
45. AB lifted part of the copy from the prospectus for the preface to D.
46. Although the column appeared in both E and Am, AB favored the Am appearances in compiling D.
47. On several occasions, definitions that should have appeared side by side for maximum effect were separated between two installments, thus weakening the intended jokes.
48. Of forty-three definitions containing verse between “Reconsider” and “Zoology,” twenty-nine are known to have previously published verse (see “Notes” and “Bibliography”). To be sure, some definitions for which previously published verses have not been found probably contain lines composed specifically for inclusion in D.
49. For example, the definitions “Story,” “Trial,”“Weakness,”“Whangdepootenawah,”“Zany,” and “Zanzibar.”
50. [Unsigned,] “Mr. Bierce’s Works,” New York Times (19 Nov. 1911): 730. AB’s “Epigrams” take up only a small part of volume 8, which contains the long essay “On with the Dance!” which the reviewer actually addresses, and many short pieces of fiction.
51. [Unsigned review of CW], Athenqum (16 Sept. 1911): 322.
52. AB to Walter Neale, 10 Oct. 1911 (ALS, University of Virginia).
53. H. L. Mencken, “Ambrose Bierce,” in Prejudices: Sixth Series (New York: Knopf, 1927), 260. Mencken’s article first appeared in the Chicago Tribune (1 Mar. 1925).
54. Carey McWilliams, “Introduction,” in The Devil’s Dictionary (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), vi. Renewed publication of and interest in AB’s work in the mid-1920s resulted in the publication of four biographies of AB in 1929, including one by McWilliams.
55. H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, [1986]), 436.