Ambrose Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio, as the 10th of thirteen children of Marcus and Laura Bierce. Bierce's father had a large private library, and he spent much time with the books. Bierce grew up on a farm in northern Indiana. After studying a year in a high school Bierce became at the age of fifteen a printer's apprentice on The Northern Indianan, an antislavery paper. After a term at a military school, he worked in a combination store and cafe.
In 1861 he enlisted in the army and served as an officer until 1865 in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Bierce was a topographical officer on General William B. Hazen's staff. He fought in several battles including the one that later provided the setting for 'Chickamauga' (1889), one of his best stories. After the war Bierce settled in San Francisco. He found employment as a watchman at the U.S. Sub-Treasury and began his journalistic career. Bierce contributed to a number of periodicals, among others the Overland Monthly and the Californian. In 1868 he became the editor of the News Letter. His first story, 'The Haunted Valley', appeared in 1871 in the Overland Monthly.
After his marriage to a wealthy miner's daughter, Mollie Day, Bierce went to England. He lived in London from 1872 to 1875, and wrote sketches for the magazines Figaro and Fun. During this time he published three volumes of sketches and epigrams,The fiend's delight (1872), Nuggets and dust panned out in California (1872), and Cobwebs from an empty skull (1874). Tales of Soldiers and Civilians included Bierce's most celebrated tale, 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'.
In 1877 Bierce worked as an associate editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, a weekly paper. With Thomas A. Harcourth he wrote The dance of death (1877) under the pseudonym William Herman. In the late 1870s he tried his luck in the mining business in the Dakota Territory without success, and returned to San Francisco to work for the Wasp. Bierce joined later the San Francisco Examiner, which started his long career as a columnist and contributor to the Hearst publications. Between the years 1887 and 1906 Bierce wrote his famous column "The Prattler", which was a mixture of literary gossip, epigrams, and stories. His sardonic and cruel epigrams and aphorisms Bierce gathered in The Cynic's word book (1906). When he edited his 12-volume Collected Works (1909-1912), however, he changed the title of this work to THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (1911).
In 1896 Bierce moved to Washington, D.C., and contributed to the New York Journal, the San Francisco Examiner, and Cosmopolitan magazine. Bierce's marriage started to fall apart, and he had problems with alcohol. His son, Day, had run away from home at fifteen. Day killed a rival suitor of a sixteen-year-old girl, and committed suicide. His other son died of pneumonia at the age of 26. In the 1890s Beirce published some of his best works, including Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. In 1904 he divorced and broke completely with his family. From 1900 to 1913 Bierce lived and worked mainly in Washington.
In 1913, at the age of 71, Bierce disappeared into revolution-torn Mexico to fight alongside the bandit Pancho Villa. Although a popular theory is that Bierce argued with Villa over military strategy and was subsequently shot, he probably perished in the battle of Ojinaga on January 11, 1914. Another story says that Bierce did not go to Mexico at all but, instead, he committed suicide in the Grand Canyon. One more wild story tells that he was held captive by a tribe of Brazilian Indians.
Ambrose Bierce was the author of supernatural stories that have secured his place in both the weird tradition and in American letters at large. The stories in his two primary volumes, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1892) and Can Such Things Be? (1893) often added a Western setting to Gothic fiction -- and, more importantly, developed the psychological aspects of horror first recognized by Edgar Allan Poe.
|