Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of short stories written by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

. Published in 1891, the 26 stories detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

. His famous story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians...

" is included in this collection.

Publication

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 from 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

George Sterling

George Sterling was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated in Northern California as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the United States.-Biography:Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the...

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

The original publication contained nineteen stories, while those in later publications increased in number; 1898 to 22, and
1909 to 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 his collection 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.

Comparisons and inspiration

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." However, because Bierce's Tales of Soldiers and Civilians occur during the Civil War, it is often compared with Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism...

's The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane . Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound—a "red badge of courage"—to...

. Contemporary reviews suggested that Bierce's writing had comparatively more value, evidenced by such reviews as by the Rochester Post-Express, which stated: "Bierce's pictures of the Civil War are vastly more valuable than Crane’s 'Red Badge of Coruage'", and by the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune: "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 and his experiences as a soldier served as an inspiration for his writing, particularly for the Soldiers section. In this way, Bierce's war treatments anticipate and parallel Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

's later arrival, whereas the civilian tales later influence horror writers.

Structure

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 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—Soldiers and Civilians. Within these short stories, Bierce's uses roman numerals to demarcate segments. For example, A Horseman in the Sky is eleven pages long, yet has four parts.

Soldiers

Civilians

"A Horseman in the Sky" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians... " "Chickamauga" "A son of the gods" "One of the Missing" "Killed at Resaca" "The Affair at Coulter’s Notch" "The Coup de Grâce" "Parker Adderson, philosopher" "An Affair of Outposts" "The Story of a Conscience" "One Kind of Officer" "One Officer, One Man "George Thurston" "The Mocking-Bird"

"The Man Out of the Nose" "An Adventure at Brownville" "The Famous Gilson Bequest" "The Applicant" "A Watcher by the Dead" "The Man and the Snake" "A Holy Terror" "The suitable surrounding" "The Boarded Window" "A Lady from Red Horse" "The Eyes of the Panther"

Literary significance

Many critics have noted the collection's heavy irony, particularly in its depictions of heroism and war. Those soldiers who aspire to "manly" virtues on the battlefield often only add to the horrors of the war around them, such as Lieutenant Brayle of "Incident of Resaca", whose brave sacrifice inspires a hundred men to charge needlessly into certain death, or "An Affair at Coulter’s Notch", in which an officer's sense of duty causes him to knowingly shell his own home, killing his family. Bierce's stories can thus be read as evoking a "crisis of masculine identity" in which exaggeratedly "masculine" behavior paradoxically stems from a "feminine" insecurity and desire to impress one's fellows.

The war stories are also notable for their frank portrayal of wounds not only to soldiers, but also to women (in "Chickamauga") and children (in "An Affair at Coulter’s Notch"), an approach which was very rare in Bierce's day. This gruesome physical cost of war is then juxtaposed, often explicitly, with the idealized portrait of war presented by some of the collection’s officers and politicians.