Produced by David Clarke, Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note: The two introductory sections, "The Introduction," and "A Memoir of Ambrose Bierce," were originally printed in italics with non-italicized text used for emphasis. This convention has been reversed for ease of reading the e-text. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved. The Letters of Ambrose Bierce [Illustration] The Letters of Ambrose Bierce EDITED BY BERTHA CLARK POPE WITH A MEMOIR BY GEORGE STERLING [Illustration] SAN FRANCISCO THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA 1922 In reproducing these letters we have followed as nearly as possible the original manuscripts. This inevitably has caused a certain lack of uniformity throughout the volume, as in the case of the names of magazines and newspapers, which are sometimes italicized and sometimes in quotation marks.--THE EDITOR. COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CALIFORNIA BOOK CLUB The Introduction by BERTHA CLARK POPE "The question that starts to the lips of ninety-nine readers out of a hundred," says Arnold Bennett, in a review in the London _NEW AGE_ in 1909, "even the best informed, will assuredly be: 'Who is Ambrose Bierce?' I scarcely know, but I will say that among what I may term 'underground reputations' that of Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most striking example. You may wander for years through literary circles and never meet anybody who has heard of Ambrose Bierce, and then you may hear some erudite student whisper in an awed voice: 'Ambrose Bierce is the greatest living prose writer.' I have heard such an opinion expressed." Bierce himself shows his recognition of the "underground" quality of his reputation in a letter to George Sterling: "How many times, and during a period of how many years must one's unexplainable obscurity be pointed out to constitute fame? Not knowing, I am almost disposed to consider myself the most famous of authors. I have pretty nearly ceased to be 'discovered,' but my notoriety as an obscurian may be said to be worldwide and everlasting."