Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born June 24, 1842, in a log cabin on Horse Cave Creek, in Meigs County, Ohio. He grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana. Before the Civil War began, he studied at the Kentucky Military Institute. He joined the 9th Indiana Volunteers in April 1861 and rose from private to first lieutenant. He served in West Virginia at the battles of Philippi, Girard Hill, Rich Mountain, and Carrick’s Ford. After re-enlisting with the regiment in August, he served at Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, Stone's River, and Chickamauga. He was part of Sherman’s campaign for Atlanta and was wounded in the head at Kennesaw Mountain on June 23, 1864. After returning to his brigade, he was present at Franklin and Nashville. Bierce is best known as an American satirist and short story writer. His experiences in the 9th Indiana were the inspiration for many of his stories. He settled in San Francisco and wrote for News-Letter and, in 1868, became the paper’s editor. In 1872, he moved to London and wrote for the magazines Fun and Figaro under the pen name Dod Grile. The stories he wrote for those magazines were published in 1874 as Cobwebs from an Empty Skull. Other of Bierce’s books published in 1874 include The Fiend’s Delight and Nuggets and Dust Panned Out in California. He returned to San Francisco in 1877 where he wrote for Argonaut and edited Wasp. Bierce wrote for Sunday Examiner which was owned by William Randolph Hearst, but left there and unsuccessfully tried placer mining in the Dakota Territory. From 1899 to 1913, Bierce worked for Hearst in Washington, D.C. In 1913, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce went to Mexico while the country was in the midst of a revolution. His date and place of death remain a mystery, but it is thought he was killed in the siege of Ojinaga in January 1914. His most noted works are In the Midst of Life (1891), Can Such Things Be? (1893), and The Devil’s Dictionary (1906). His Collected Works were published in 12 volumes (1906-1912). The writings of Ambrose Bierce were often compared to those of Edgar Allen Poe and Bret Harte, and he in turn is said to have influenced the writing of Stephen Crane and O. Henry.

---