- An Occurrence At Owl Creek
Bridge
- and Other Stories
-
- by Ambrose Bierce
-
- Introduction by S.T. Joshi
-
- Perhaps
best known as a journalist and the author of the sardonic
The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce ranks
alongside Poe as one of the fathers of American
supernatural fiction.
-
- As a
young man he served in the Federal army during the
American Civil war, participating in some of the most
horrific battles, and this closeness to the horrors and
excitement of war informed both his famed cynicism and
his fiction. As S.T. Joshi says in his new Introduction
to these, the complete supernatural stories, 'The element
that fuses Bierce's tales . . . is the focus on what
might be called the psychology and physiology of fear. .
. . Bierce is relentless in dissecting the precise
succession of emotions that transforms a sane, normal man
. . . into a gibbering lunatic.' And Bierce's precise,
pared down writing style provides a perfect foil to the
Gothic content of his tales.
-
- In his
journalism, Bierce habitually ridiculed belief in ghosts,
apparitions, and revenants; but he nonetheless continued
to find death a powerful and troubling concept. It is
significant that he does not provide an entry for 'Death'
in The Devil's Dictionary: it was, perhaps,
the one phenomenon he could not poke fun at. His own
death remains an enduring mystery: the septuagenarian
Bierce went missing during a trip to Revolutionary Mexico
late in 1913, and no trace of him has ever been
found.
-
-
- An
Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and Other
Stories is a sewn hardback book of 256+xviii
pages.
-
- Limited
to 300 copies. ISBN 978-1-905784-10-3.
-
- Price
£32.50/$55 inc. p&p.
-
- ISBN
978-1-905784-10-3
-
- Contents: 'Introduction', by S.T. Joshi,
'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge', 'A Tough Tussle',
'The Man and the Snake', 'A Watcher by the Dead', 'The
Suitable Surroundings', 'An Inhabitant of Carcosa', 'The
Boarded Window', 'The Middle Toe of the Right Foot',
'Haïta the Shepherd', 'The Damned Thing', 'The Eyes
of the Panther', 'The Death of Halpin Frayser', 'An
Adventure at Brownville', 'The Famous Gilson Bequest',
'The Secret of Macarger's Gulch', 'A Psychological
Shipwreck', 'The Night-Doings at "Deadman's" ', 'John
Bartine's Watch', 'The Realm of the Unreal', 'A Baby
Tramp', 'Some Haunted Houses' ('The Isle of Pines', 'A
Fruitless Assignment', 'A Vine on a House', 'At Old Man
Eckert's', 'The Spook House', 'The Other Lodgers', 'The
Thing at Nolan'), 'Bodies of the Dead' ('That of Granny
Magone', 'A Light Sleeper', 'The Mystery of Charles
Farquharson', ' "Dead and Gone" ', 'A Cold Night', 'A
Creature of Habit'), 'Mysterious Disappearances' ('The
Difficulties of Crossing a Field', 'An Unfinished Race',
'Charles Ashmore's Trail', 'Science to the Front'), 'A
Diagnosis of Death', 'Moxon's Master', 'A Jug of Syrup',
'Staley Fleming's Hallucination', 'Beyond the Wall', 'The
Stranger', 'The Ways of Ghosts' ('Present at a Hanging',
'A Cold Greeting', 'A Wireless Message', 'An Arrest'),
'Soldier-Folk' ('A Man with Two Lives', 'Three and One
Are One', 'A Baffled Ambuscade', 'Two Military
Executions'), 'The Moonlit Road', 'Bibliography' by S.T.
Joshi.
-
-
Review:
- '...an insight into a cynical
soul who found humour in murder, patricide
and all sorts of other macabre subjects. The
master of the twish ending has at last come
home." Andrew McQuade, Gorezone
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updated 5th September 2009
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