While Bierce was working in Washington D.C. writing for Hearst newspapers, his publisher and friend, Walter Neale, encouraged him to collect and republish his works, which resulted in the present collection. Work began on the project in 1909 and was completed in 1912, a year before Bierce disappeared into Mexico. Many of the works had not appeared in book form before, and because Bierce did not hesitate to revise his earlier work in the process of collecting it, this collection includes many first appearances of revised versions of previously unpublished works. See Starrett " Ambrose Bierce - A Bibliography": 'As a whole, the Collected Works must be regarded as a FIRST EDITION of the highest importance to the Bierce collector"". The set comprises: Ashes of the Beacon, The Land Beyond The Blow, For The Ahkoond, John Smith, Liberator, Bits of Autobiography, In The Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians), Can Such Things Be?, Shapes of Clay, Black Beetles in Amber, The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter, Fantastic Fables, The Devils Dictionary, Negligible Tales, On With the Dance, Epigrams, Tangential Views, The Opinionator, Antepenultimata, In Motley, Kings of Beasts, Two Administrations & Miscellaneous Works.