"The covers of this book are too far apart" source? (+ Riley)

[Stephen Goranson]

Many attribute this quotation to Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). For instance,
Yale Book of Quotations cites Bitter Bierce (1929), by C.H. Grattan [p. 45-6].
Grattan gives an inexact and incomplete reference that nonetheless leads to an
introduction by Robert H. Davis in The Work [singular] of Stephen Crane, vol.
2, p. x-xi (limited ed. 1925). Davis, who knew Bierce, reports that Bierce
spoke highly of Crane. "That, coming from the brilliant critic who wrote that
classic single-line review, 'The covers of this book are too far apart,'
encouraged me that I had at least interpreted the fourteenth child of Jonathan
Townley Crane, D.D." This conversation apparently rook place in San Francisco in
September 1895 (p. ix-x)

A potential lead comes from Carey McWilliams, whose Ambrose Bierce: A
Biography (1929) p.287 includes the quote. McWilliams (as reported in Libraries
v.34 n.3 March 1929 by Katharine Foster) gave a talk at a Los Angeles library
meeting on Jan. 12 1929: "Mr. McWilliams referred to a short review written by
Ambrose Bierce when he wrote of a slender volume of verse very much to the
point, 'The covers of this book are too far apart.'"

Google books offers two iffy leads:

The Atlantic Monthly - Page 37 (year?)
by John Davis Batchelder Collection (Library of Congress) - 1857 ... his
literary philosophy in that most famous of all brief reviews (of course, of
a realistic novel) : 'The covers of this book are too far apart ...
[Here, supposedly a novel, not verse]

The Architectural Forum
Architecture - 1972 (? google year) Page 21 ... perhaps, that anonymous
London Times Literary Supplement man (or woman) who once wrote that "the
covers of this book are too far apart" ? has ever, ...
[But the excellent bibliography (below) lists no TLS publications]

Bierce wrote under many pen names and anonymously. Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated
Bibliography of Primary Sources, S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (1999)
reflects great research, including his scrapbooks, but (personal communication
from DS) they have not found this quotation in known Bierce publications.

Dyng to Teach by J. Berman apparently (googlewise) misattributes the quote to
Riley Grannan; The Book of Eulogies by Phyllis Theroux (cited in Berman)
contains eulogies for Grannan and Bierce, the later with the quote, separately.

(By the way the oft-reprnted 1908 eulogy for Riley Grannan by Herman
Knickerbocker, plus many other publications on this once-famous gambler,
suggest he's at least a good fit for "living [or leading] the life of Riley.")

Grannan eulogy (four web pages):
http://www.nevadaweb.com/ghp/riley1.html

Any other leads?

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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