The Devils Dictionary

Subject: The Devils Dictionary
From: stevethesqueeze
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 07:45 AM

I thought you might like these definitions from "The Devil's Dictionary, author Ambrose Bierce. Published in the UK by Oxford University Press in their series Oxford Language Classics, 2002"


Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin

There's also

Piano, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience


stevethesqueeze

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 08:10 AM

A truly wonderful book, Steve!

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 01:12 PM

"The Devil's Dictionary," Ambrose Bierce, is on line in its entirety: Devil's Dictionary
Look at the poems by various authors, included by Bierce with some of his "definitions."

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Peace
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 02:03 PM

Bierce died in Mexico in 1913 or 1914 didn't he? (My memory ain't what it used to be, and it never was.) And his body was never found?

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 02:16 PM

Ambrose Bierce is ALIVE, and living with Elvis in Rio de Janiero!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 02:31 PM

Our local Oxfam shop received dozens of copies from either a bookshop or publisher that went bust. Needless to say I got a couple:-) Just brilliant!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 03:02 PM

Yes, brucie, and the movie "The Old Gringo" is a fictional account of his last days, covering the Mexican Revolution. Not a bad film.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Joe_F
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 06:05 PM

Fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: mack/misophist
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 07:20 PM

Ambrose is believed to have left San Francisco to go to Mexice to interview Emiliano Zapata. He was really too old for that sort of thing by then. That's all any one knows for certain. He's probably not in Rio, though. I hear it's not such a nice place any more.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Joybell
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 11:12 PM

I always thought that he changed his name to Don Juan and lurked in Mexican bus shelters. Joy

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 11:18 PM

Ambrose Bierce was 72 when he disappeared in 1914.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: LadyJean
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 11:20 PM

Bierce went to Mexico and disappeared. People do that. One of the people I cleaned for, who was kind of paranoid, had a book on how to hide your assets and disappear. The book reccomended Mexico as a good place to disappear in.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: RiGGy
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 11:24 PM

Our new Muddy Member, Stan Kelly-Boodle wrote a very funny book
mixing computers and Bierce, back in '81 called The Devils DP Dictionary.
http://www.feniks.com/skb/words/words.html

One of my old Philly college chums also wrote his own takeoff
The Devil's New Dictionary by Richard Iannelli
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0806507918/002-8425305-3327223?v=glance
Riggy

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 12:02 AM

The last letter from Bierce, written from Chihuahua, December 26, 1913, said he expected to move out to Ojinaga to be with Francisco Villa's troops. No more was heard from him. Villa captured Ojinaga from federal troops on January 1, 1914. Investigators found nothing and presumed that he died during the battle. For a condensed description of his eventful life, see: Bierce Chronology

A comprehensive "Devil's Dictionary" is being (or recently has been) published. Bierce only published a selection in his book; many entries had appeared in California newspapers.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 07:56 AM

Among non-Bierce DDict-style definitions I recall is 'Farmyard: A square stench surrounded by buildings'.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 08:08 AM

I still have a copy I got in high school. I might point out that regardless of where he died, he was a good Ohio boy from Meigs County.

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 10:17 AM

Check with Little Hawk, maybe he's one of the Star Trek pantheon of 'Immortals', and moves on and assumes a new ID when people believe he has lived too long.

If so, who is he marauding as now?

Nigel

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 08:50 PM

"The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary," Bierce, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, Univ. Georgia Press, 440 pp. in paperback, available from Amazon and other sources. The hardback (2000) is out of print.
This edition contains additional definitions and is fully annotated.

Bierce, wearing his journalist's hat, published in newspapers, etc., in England as well as in the United States.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Abby Sale
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 06:42 PM

It's should all over the web. Go Google. I downloaded a copy 10 years ago but then we thought addresses were permanenent & there was no real need to record the URL. Right!

This is all the identifier stuff I have:

The Internet Wiretap 1st Online Edition of
                      The Devil's Dictionary
                               by
                         Ambrose Bierce
          COPYRIGHT 1911 by Albert and Charles Boni, Inc.
               A Public Domain Text, Copyright Expired
                      Released April 15 1993
                Entered by Aloysius of &tSftDotIotE
                     [e-mail]
Return to The Knorst Family Home Page. [Image] Return to Jack's
                               Home Page.
       This page created by Jack Knorst - email: ([e-mail])
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or I can e-mail it to you. Only 385 kb

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 07:26 PM

??
09 Jan 04, my link to a website with the complete Devil's Dictionary, 1911 edition (the first was pub. in 1906 by Doubleday Page).
Those really interested should buy the new edition with additions and commentary put out by the Univ. Georgia Press, now available in paperback.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 08:44 PM

You may find it at the site which has a project to publish on line all books in the public domain out of copyright - the name escapes me, but I'm sure someone else here will oblige...

Robin

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 08:47 PM

project guttenbrg


Glad to oblige


Nigel

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 10:03 PM

It can be found at Gutenberg, but the one I gave is easier to read. txt file at:
Devil's Dictionary

Also a zipped file: Zipped devil

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 10:07 PM

Link to zipped Devil changed but just fill in the blanks and follow directions.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 12 Jan 04 - 10:13 AM

Bierce was also an excellent writer of short stories, his most famous being probably "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" which was adapted for TV at least twice, once as an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in 1959, and again as an episode of "The Twilight Zone," in 1964. See Bierce on the Screen.

I imagine his stories can be found online, too.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: GUEST
Date: 15 May 07 - 03:39 AM

name

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Scorpio
Date: 15 May 07 - 06:20 AM

I once read a story in which Bierce met his end when his hosts (who were very generous with food) turned out to be cannibals.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 May 07 - 04:32 PM

No cannibals in Mexico- maybe vampires?.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Amos
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:23 PM

Does anyone know if there was any particular link between Ambrose Bierce and Alistaire Crowley?


A

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 May 07 - 01:56 PM

I would sincerely doubt it. Bierce was a satirist, even his ghost stories show this touch, as do his stories of the Civil War.
As near as I can tell from a biography, he was agnostic.

Some of his many short stories, and the "Devil's Dictionary," are here:
http://www.online-literature.com/bierce
Bierce

Try "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
He was an excellent writer who was not above twisting a knife in the reader; he should be much better known.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Amos
Date: 16 May 07 - 02:44 PM

"Aleister Crowley, explicitly identified by name, is a major character in F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's 1994 novel The Woman Between the Worlds, and also appears in "The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex", a 1997 short story by MacIntyre. In both of these fictional works, MacIntyre divulges obscure but accurate facts about Crowley: for example, the surprising fact that the American author Ambrose Bierce was residing near the home of Crowley's parents in Leamington Spa in February 1875, nine months before Crowley's birth.
"

Aside from this odd coincidence, they occasionally get mentioned together or anthologized in the same place, but o other connection comes up.


A

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 07 - 10:09 PM

As some of our resident MudCatters will attest...there is a DISTINCT difference between, Lucifer/Divil, Satanists/Wiccans, Ghea/Herra.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 May 07 - 11:11 PM

Which, Guest, has absolutely nothing to do with Ambrose Bierce.

Subject: RE: The Devils Dictionary
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 May 07 - 02:01 AM

I happen to know that Bierce is alive and well and living in Shangri La. Along with Amelia Earhardt.