The Devil's Dictionary
Autor Ambrose Bierceen Limba Engleză Paperback
The Devil's Dictionary
by Ambrose Bierce
A CLASSIC
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book, it features Bierce's witty and often ironic spin on many common English words. Retitled in 1911, it has been followed by numerous "unabridged" versions compiled after Bierce's death, which include definitions absent from earlier editions.
The Devil's Dictionary began as a serialized column during Bierce's time as a columnist for the San Francisco News Letter, a small weekly financial magazine founded by Frederick Marriott in the late 1850s. Although a serious magazine aimed at businessmen, the News Letter contained a page of informal satirical content titled "The Town Crier." Bierce, hired as the "Crier"'s editor in December 1868, wrote satire with such irreverence and lack of inhibition he was nicknamed "the laughing devil of San Francisco."
Bierce resigned from "The Town Crier" and spent three years in London. Returning to San Francisco in 1875, he made two submissions to the News Letter in hopes of regaining his old position. Both were written under aliases. One, entitled "The Demon's Dictionary," contained Bierce's definitions for 48 words. Later forgotten in his compiling of The Devil's Dictionary, they were added almost a century later to an Enlarged Devil's Dictionary published in 1967.
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Livrare economică 14-28 ianuarie 26
Specificații
ISBN-10: 1533666520
Pagini: 132
Dimensiuni: 216 x 279 x 7 mm
Greutate: 0.32 kg
Descriere
History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement. These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago--with or without the devil's help--can still draw blood today.
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'If one book should be issued to every child at birth, this is it ... What is extraordinary about Bierce's waspish definitions is how accurate they seem, more than a century after he wrote them ... This edition is exuberantly illustrated by Ralph Steadman ... Everyone should buy this, and learn from it'
'A superb book. Steadman has always been one of my heroes'
'An American classic, some of its charming (and cynical) definitions are uncannily appropriate to our own day and would make it, I fancy, an ideal Christmas stocking present'