Ambrose Bierce

The author Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was born on June 24, 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce and Laura Sherwood Bierce. He was a naughty child, but, when he was not out playing devilish pranks, he would surround himself with the books of his literature-loving father. Family conditions were never comfortable and Ambrose Bierce left home at fifteen. In 1861, at nineteen years of age, he enlisted in the Civil War. When the war was over Bierce worked for the Treasury Department for Reconstruction Work in the south and also for the government mapping unknown regions of the west. He then went to San Francisco where he decided on a literary career. While working as a night guard at the U.S. Mint, Bierce read voraciously in his spare time and developed a literary style of his own. In 1868, at age 26, Bierce became the editor of the News-Letter. He stayed until March 9, 1872 completing 167 weekly columns. Bierce married in 1871 and, as a wedding gift from his father-inlaw, spent a long honeymoon in England. In July, 1872 Bierce s first book, The Fiend s Delight, a collection of materials from the California papers was published. Although the book appeared under a pseudonym, Bierce gained notoriety for his acid wit and became known as Bitter Bierce. A second collection of California columns, entitled Nuggets and Dust, appeared in 1873 and he became even more successful. He rejoined his wife and his children, who had come back from England before, in San Francisco in September of 1874 and sold irregularly to the journals while again employed at the Mint. For the following two decades or so Bierce worked for different weeklies and papers: the Argonaut, the Wasp, the Examiner. This was an era of extensive writing (he also appeared again in book form with The Dance of Death, issued under another nom de plume). This era, however, also marked the tragic suicide of Bierce s eldest son and Bierce s indefinite separation from his wife. These griefs and the later death of his other son, Bierce s divorce and the death of his wife combined to make his satire even more bitter and his fiction even more morbid than before. In 1891 his first collection of stories appeared, twenty-six horror stories entitled Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. In 1892, together with k 93