Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
The Army and
Navy Club,
Washington, D. C.,
October 29,
1907.
James D. Blake, Esq.,
Dear Sir:
It is a matter of no great importance to me, but the republication of the foolish books that you mention would not be agreeable to me. They have no kind of merit or interest. One of them, "The Fiend's Delight," was published against my protest; the utmost concession that the compiler and publisher (the late John Camden Hatten, London) would make was to let me edit his collection of my stuff and write a preface. You would pretty surely lose money on any of them.
If you care to republish anything of mine you would, I think, do better with "Black Beetles in Amber," or "Shapes of Clay." The former sold well, and the latter would, I think, have done equally well if the earthquake-and-fire had not destroyed it, including the plates. Nearly all of both books were sold in San Francisco, and the sold, as well as the unsold, copies—I mean the unsold copies of the latter—perished in the fire. There is much inquiry for them (mainly from those who lost them) and I am told that they bring fancy prices. You probably know about that better than I.
I should be glad to entertain proposals from you for their republication—in San Francisco—and should not be exacting as to royalties, and so forth.
But the other books are "youthful indiscretions" and are "better dead." Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
The Army and
Navy Club,
Washington, D. C.,
December 28,1907.