Collection of Letters in the Archives & Rare Books Library
Born in Meigs County, Ohio in 1842, Ambrose Bierce was one of America’s most popular short story writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known for his acerbic wit and satire, he was once labeled “Bitter Bierce” for his journalistic lampooning of politicians and well-heeled businessmen. His humor and satire have great staying power. Much of his work remains in print, including what is, perhaps, his most notable work, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911). His fictional output, such as the classic short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” touches on the macabre and on war, themes that grew from his experiences in the Civil War. In 1913, Bierce traveled to the Mexican desert to join the revolutionary forces of Pancho Villa and subsequently disappeared. The exact nature of his fate has never been learned, and over the decades Bierce’s literary reputation has been maintained in part because of his mysterious end.
The UC collection of his letters consists of 59 items, sent to Myles Walsh, and donated by Walsh to the University of Cincinnati after World War II. Walsh’s sister Lily was a protégé of Bierce and during her illness - and after her death - in young adulthood, the two men began writing to each other about everyday matters and Bierce’s journalism and fiction. These items are unique, and revelatory in the biographical details they provide on a major author’s life. Typically, the letters are four pages each, a.l.s., measuring 5” x 8” and totaling approximately 240 pages. Other major holdings of Bierce correspondence can be found at UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA, with other letters held at a few other institutions.
In digitizing these letters, the University of Cincinnati would be able to make them widely available for literary scholarship. Such a project would include accompanying transcriptions, linking to the holdings of universities and scholarly websites, open acceptance of scholarly annotation, and the possibility of collaborative digitization with other repositories of Bierce material.
For this project, Linda Newman and the Digital Projects Department are doing the actual digitization of the letters in-house, beginning after January 1, 2011. Contributors are given a photocopy of an original letter (or more) and asked to transcribe it to a Word document. Additionally, they are asked to provide a simple annotation of key names or events that appear in the letter in order to place it in context – just a sentence or two. I serve as project director and editor, and “orientation” begins with a PowerPoint on Bierce and the letters, along with a showing of the 1989 film, Old Gringo, starring Gregory Peck (as Bierce), Jane Fonda, and Jimmy Smits, about Bierce’s final days in the Mexican desert.
When the project is completed, the digitized letters, along with the transcriptions and annotations, will be placed in dedicated pages on the Archives & Rare Books Library website, along with links to relevant UCLID holdings and to other scholarly Bierce websites. Contributors will be acknowledged on this site. We’ll even declare an “Ambrose Bierce Day” to unveil the final project. So, one can reasonably expect cake.
As Bierce said, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”
-Kevin Grace
Staff:
Kevin Grace, ARB, project director and editor; web content
Linda Newman, Digital Projects Department, digitization director
Bradley Wedig, Kent State University, digitization intern
Janice Schulz, ARB, webmaster
Contributors:
Kevin Grace, Archives & Rare Books Library
Mark Palkovic, CCM Library
Susan Banoun, Catalogue Department
James Van Mil, Catalogue Department
Olga Hart, Reference and Instruction
Holly Prochaska, Geology-Math-Physics Library
Mary Piper, HSL Library
Rosemary Franklin, Reference and Bibliographic Services
