Biography of ambrose bierce

Born June 24,
Meigs City, Ohio
Died or
Place of death unknown

Civil War veteran who authored
several short stories about the Civil War

Ambrose Bierce was one of America's best-known writers of the nineteenth century. As a Union soldier during the Civil War, Bierce witnessed the violence and horror of war firsthand. After the war ended, he drew upon those wartime experiences to write a number of popular short stories and essays. In addition, he ranked as one of the country's most famous newspaper columnists during the s and s.

Growing up in poverty

Ambrose Bierce was born in southeastern Ohio in , but he spent most of his childhood in Indiana. He was the tenth of thirteen children born to Marcus Aurelius and Laura Bierce, poor farmers who struggled to provide food and clothing for their children. Ambrose spent a good deal of his childhood tackling farm chores under the watchful supervision of his disciplinarian mother. As a result, he received very little

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Ambrose Bierce

by

Kevin Corstorphine

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 May
• DOI: /obo/

Berkove, Lawrence inom. A Prescription for Adversity: The Moral Art of Ambrose Bierce. Columbus: Ohio State University Press,

Argues against the trend of placing too much emphasis on Bierce’s biography, particularly his “bitter” reputation, and strange disappearance. Berkove instead argues for the inherent value of Bierce’s literary achievements through a study of his literary and philosophical influences.

Gale, Robert L. An Ambrose Bierce Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood,

A useful reference work that gives an alphabetical list of Bierce’s essays, reviews, and character names across his fiction.

Grenander, Mary Elizabeth. Ambrose Bierce. New York: Twayne,

Provides a timeline and biography of Bierce, and fryst vatten also particularly useful in giving literary analysis, dividing the short stories into the didactic and mimetic.

Grenander, Mary Elizabeth,

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Entry updated 27 January Tagged: Author.

(circa ) US journalist, poet and author of short stories and Satires, deeply affected by his four years in the American Civil War (he enlisted as a private in , was breveted major for bravery, and was wounded twice). Like Bret Harte and Mark Twain (who were both resident in London in the s, as for shorter periods was Joaquin Miller), he soon went abroad, spending circa in the UK, publishing three volumes of sketches there as by Dod Grile, most notably The Fiend's Delight (coll ), which contains "The Discomfited Demon", his first significant tale of the supernatural, and the savage little fables assembled primarily in Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (coll UK; vt Cobwebs: Being the Fables of Zambri, the Parsee, circa). But afterwards – unlike Harte, who had permanently departed the scanty commercial opportunities there – he returned to California.

Bierce is perhaps best known for a series of sometimes brilliantly