User:Zamnesic/draft Tales

Published in 1891, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of short stories written by Ambrose Bierce. These stories (twenty-six in all) detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. One short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, has had notable influence.

Publication Details
In the preface to the first edition, Bierce maintained that the book had been “denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country.” He credited the eventual publication of the book to his friend, Mr. E. L. G. Steele, a merchant of San Francisco, who was listed with the 1891 copyright.

In 1898, Tales was republished along with other stories by G.P. Putnam’s Sons under the title In the Midst of Life.

George Sterling, in the introduction to a later (1927) edition, noted that as a result of “obtuse critics and a benighted public” it failed to become the sensation Bierce had expected.

The original publication maintained nineteen stories, while later publications increased: 1898: 22; 1909: 26. The original nineteen stories were retained in the 1898 publication, but were not entirely collectively retained in the 1909 edition. Four of these were transferred by Bierce into Collected Works, Can Such Things Be? In a similar fashion, Bierce moved eight stories into the 1909 version of In the Midst of Life from the 1893 edition of Can Such Things Be?  Sixteen of the original stories were initially published in the San Francisco Examiner.

Comparative Details
Near publication, the New York Tribune wrote that “These tales are so original as to defy comparison…weird and curious…There’s nothing like it in fiction.” Yet, since Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians occur during the Civil War, it is often compared with Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. Contemporary reviews suggested that Bierce’s writing had comparatively more value, evidenced by such reviews as by the Rochester Post-Express that “Bierce’s pictures of the Civil War are vastly more valuable than Crane’s ‘Red Badge of Coruage’” or by the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune that “Bierce’s work shows far more imagination and a better grasp of thought and events than Crane’s.”

Bierce served as a union soldier during the civil war. His experiences as a soldier were leveraged into his writing, particularly for the Soldiers section, arguably his artistic peak. In this way, Bierce’s war treatments anticipate and parallel Ernest Hemingway’s later arrival, whereas the civilian tales later influence horror writers.

Structural Details
the Federal cannoneers fought their hopeless battle in an atmosphere of living iron whose thoughts were lightnings and whose deeds were death

Since the book is a compilation of short stories, there is not an overarching plot. However, there are literary elements, or plot devices, that are shared throughout. Bierce’s stories here often begin mid-plot, with relevant details withheld until the end, where the dramatic resolution unfolds differently than expected, to a degree where most are considered twist endings. His characters, were described by George Sterling as: "His heroes, or rather victims, are lonely men, passing to unpredictable dooms, and hearing, from inaccessible crypts of space, the voices of unseen malevolencies."

The book is divided into two segments—one is: Soldiers; the other: Civilians. Within these short stories, Bierce's style was to use roman numerals to demarcate segments. For example, A Horseman in the Sky is eleven pages long, yet has four parts.