Predecessors Prior to Bierce, the best-known writer of amusing definitions was
Samuel Johnson. His
A Dictionary of the English Language was published 15 April 1755. Johnson's
Dictionary defined 42,733 words, almost all seriously. A small handful have witty definitions and became widely quoted, but they were infrequent exceptions to Johnson's learned and serious explanations of word meanings.
Noah Webster earned fame for his 1806
A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language and his 1828
An American Dictionary of the English Language. Most people assume that Webster's text is unrelieved by humor, but (as Bierce himself was to discover and describe), Webster made witty comments in a tiny number of definitions.
Gustave Flaubert wrote notes for the
Dictionary of Received Ideas (sometimes called
Dictionary of Accepted Ideas; in French,
Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues) between 1850 and 1855 but never completed it. Decades after his death, researchers combed through Flaubert's papers and published the
Dictionary under his name in 1913 (two years after Bierce's book ''The Devil's Dictionary''), "But the alphabetful of definitions we have here is compiled from a mass of notes, duplicates and variants that were never even sorted, much less proportioned and polished by the author."
Origins and development Bierce took decades to write his lexicon of satirical definitions. He warmed up by including definitions infrequently in satirical essays, most often in his weekly columns "The Town Crier" or "Prattle". His earliest known definition was published in 1867. His first try at a multiple-definition essay was titled "Webster Revised". It included definitions of four terms and was published in early 1869. Bierce also wrote definitions in his personal letters. For example, in one letter he defined "missionaries" as those "who, in their zeal to lay about them, do not scruple to seize any weapon that they can lay their hands on; they would grab a crucifix to beat a dog." By summer of 1869 he had conceived of the idea of something more substantial: "Could any one but an American humorist ever have conceived the idea of a
Comic Dictionary" he wrote. Bierce did not make his first start at writing a satirical glossary until six years later. He called it "The Demon's Dictionary", and it appeared in the
San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser of 11 December 1875. His glossary provided 48 short witty definitions, from "A" ("The first letter in every properly constructed alphabet") through "accoucheur". But "The Demon's Dictionary" appeared only once, and Bierce wrote no more satirical lexicons for another six years. Even so, Bierce's short glossary spawned imitators. One of the most substantial was written by Harry Ellington Brook, the editor of a humor magazine called
The Illustrated San Francisco Wasp. Brook's continuing column of serialized satirical definitions was called "Wasp's Improved Webster in Ten-Cent Doses". The column started with the 7 August 1880 issue and appeared weekly in 28 issues, working its way step-by-step alphabetically to define 758 words, ending with "shoddy" in the 26 February 1881 issue. In the next issue of
The Wasp Brook's column appeared no more, because
The Wasp hired Bierce and he stopped it, replacing "Wasp's Improved Webster" with his own column of satirical definitions. Bierce named his column “The Devil's Dictionary”. It first appeared in the March 5, 1881 issue. Bierce wrote 79 “The Devil's Dictionary” columns, working his way alphabetically to the word “lickspittle” in the 14 August 1886 issue. After Bierce left
The Wasp, he was hired by
William Randolph Hearst to write for his newspaper
The San Francisco Examiner in 1887. Bierce's first "Prattle" column appeared in the
Examiner on March 5 of that year, and the next installment of his satirical lexicon appeared in the 4 September 1887 issue on page 4, under the title "The Cynic's Dictionary". Bierce wrote one more “The Cynic's Dictionary” column (which ran in the 29 April 1888
Examiner, page 4), and then no more appeared for sixteen years. In the meantime, Bierce's idea of a "comic dictionary" was imitated by others, and his witty definitions were plagiarized without crediting him. One imitator even copied the name of Bierce's column. In September 1903, Bierce wrote letters to his friend
Herman George Scheffauer mentioning he was thinking about a book of his satirical definitions "regularly arranged as in a real dictionary." Bierce restarted his “The Cynic's Dictionary” columns with new definitions beginning in June 1904. Hearst's newspaper publishing company had grown nationally, so Bierce's readership had expanded dramatically as well. Now “The Cynic's Dictionary” columns usually appeared first in Hearst's
New York American, next in other Hearst papers (
San Francisco Examiner, Boston American, Chicago American, Los Angeles Examiner), and then via Hearst's syndication business in other newspapers covering additional cities Hearst newspapers did not reach.
Book publication On 4 November 1905, Bierce wrote to a friend that he was at last reshaping the witty definitions from his newspaper columns into a book, and was irritated by his imitators: “I'm compiling ''The Devil's Dictionary'' at the suggestion of Doubleday, Page & Co., who doubtless think it a lot of clowneries like the books to which it gave the cue.” The 25 November 1905 issue of
The Saturday Evening Post contained “Some Definitions,” a short list of humorous definitions by
Post editor Harry Arthur Thompson. Thompson's definitions were popular enough to generate short sequel lists called “Frivolous Definitions” and to be reprinted in newspapers and magazines. Thompson and his definitions would have an unexpected impact on the publication of Bierce's book. On 19 March 1906 Bierce signed a contract with Doubleday, Page & Co. for publication of his book, but without his preferred title ''The Devil's Dictionary''. Instead the contract used the same title as Bierce's nationally distributed newspaper columns: ''The Cynic's Dictionary''. Bierce explained to poet and playwright
George Sterling: “They (the publishers) won't have ''The Devil's Dictionary'' [as a title]. Here in the East the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity, as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.” Bierce's publishers quickly discovered that they would not be able to use ''The Cynic's Dictionary
for the title either. Harry Arthur Thompson was turning the handful of definitions he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post'' into a book. Thompson's book would be published first and would steal Bierce's title. Bierce wrote to Sterling: “I shall have to call it something else, for the publishers tell me there is a ''Cynic's Dictionary'' already out. I dare say the author took more than my title—the stuff has been a rich mine for a plagiarist for many a year.” Bierce's book was filed for copyright 30 August 1906 and was published October 1906. ''The Cynic's Word Book'' contained 521 definitions, but only for words beginning with “A” through “L.” Doubleday, Page & Co. printed and bound 1,341 copies of ''The Cynic's Word Book''. 147 copies were given to the author and to book reviewers for newspapers and magazines; 1,070 copies were sold; and eventually Doubleday remaindered 124 unsold copies and sold them below the publisher's cost. Doubleday was also able to sell British rights to a small publisher in London, Arthur F. Bird, who brought out a British edition in 1907. Sales of ''The Cynic's Word Book'' qualified it from the publisher's point of view as modestly successful, but not strong enough to justify a companion volume of words beginning with “M” through “Z” as Bierce had hoped. Bierce's plan to cover the entire alphabet was brought back to life by publisher
Walter Neale, who persuaded Bierce to sign an agreement with him on 1 June 1908 for Neale to publish
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce in a set of ten or more volumes. They planned for Volume 7 to be Bierce's lexicon, finally using his preferred title, ''The Devil's Dictionary''. To create a typescript for Neale to publish, Bierce first marked up a copy of ''The Cynic's Word Book
with changes and a few additions. That work quickly gave him definitions of words beginning with “A” through “L”. Next he took clippings of his newspaper column definitions and revised them. That brought his dictionary up from “L” to early in the letter “R”. Finally Bierce wrote 37 pages of mostly new definitions spanning from “RECONSIDER” to the end of “Z”. On 11 December 1908 Bierce wrote to George Sterling that he had completed work on The Devil's Dictionary''. In 1909 publisher Walter Neale began issuing individual volumes in the 12-volume set
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. Volume 7, ''The Devil's Dictionary
, was published in 1911. Unlike most publishers, who sell individual
volumes of a published work, Neale focused on selling complete sets
of the 12-volume Works''. Neale later claimed that he printed and sold 1,250 sets (250 numbered fully leatherbound sets, the first volume of each set signed by Bierce; a small number of sets half-bound in Morocco leather; and the bulk as sets of clothbound hardcovers). However, Neale's surviving royalty statements to Bierce for
The Collected Works tell a different story: Bierce was paid for sales of 57 fully leatherbound 12-volume sets, 8 half-Morocco sets, and approximately 164 clothbound
hardback sets. Neale did not sell the rights to print a British edition of
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. However, in late 1913 or early 1914 the periodical
The London Opinion paid Neale for the right to reprint definitions of 787 words from ''The Devil's Dictionary''. == Sample definitions ==