The Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Bierce · Keith Bendis

Sep 2019 · Fantagraphics Books

About this ebook

Ambrose Bierce, a contemporary of Mark Twain's, is known for his irreverent wit, sharp sarcasm, and sardonic view of human nature. His perennial classic of American satire, The Devil's Dictionary, offers biting observations that lampoon people, politics, American society, and its most cherished institutions. Acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist Keith Bendis has chosen a sampling of Bierce's most wickedly funny definitions to bring to life through illustration. Bierce's acerbic wit has met its perfect match with Bendis's humorous, tongue-in-cheek watercolor drawings.

About the author

Ambrose Bierce was a brilliant, bitter, and cynical journalist. He is also the author of several collections of ironic epigrams and at least one powerful story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Bierce was born in Ohio, where he had an unhappy childhood. He served in the Union army during the Civil War. Following the war, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a columnist for the newspaper the Examiner, for which he wrote a number of satirical sketches. Bierce wrote a number of horror stories, some poetry, and countless essays. He is best known, however, for The Cynic's Word Book (1906), retitled The Devil's Dictionary in 1911, a collection of such cynical definitions as "Marriage: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two." Bierce's own marriage ended in divorce, and his life ended mysteriously. In 1913, he went to Mexico and vanished, presumably killed in the Mexican revolution. Keith Bendis is a cartoonist with decades of credits in the likes of Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Sports Illustrated. He illustrated William Safire's "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine for 8 years and his own feature, "New York Sketchbook" appeared in the Sunday Daily News. He has also illustrated books for both children and adults since 1974, and works regularly as a graphic recorder.