Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (Meigs County, Ohio, 24 June 1842 -date of death uncertain, but possible december 1913 or early 1914 and probably inMexico) was an American satirist, writer of short stories and critic, Publisher and journalist. He is most famous for his satirical The Devil's Dictionary dictionary and the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. His sardonic descriptions gave rise to his nickname Bitter Bierce. His work has stood the test of time thanks to its lucid style and lack of sentimentality.



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[hide] *1 youth and military service  ==Youth and military service[ Edit] == Ambrose Bierce was the tenth of thirteen children who desire of his father, Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799 – 1876), all had a name that started with an ' A '.Although he was born in Ohio, he spent most of his childhood in Kosciusko County, Indiana.
 * 2 private life
 * 3 Journalistic career
 * 4 literary works
 * 5 Disappearance
 * 6 Trivia
 * 7 external links

At the beginning of the American civil war he joined the 9th Indiana Infantry of the Union army and was appointed first lieutenant in February 1862 under General William Babcock Hazen as topographer. He made maps of likely battlefields. Bierce fought at the battle of Shiloh (april 1862), a terrifying event that formed the basis for various short stories and a memoir, titled What I Saw of Shiloh.

He remained active on the Western front and pulled out even the newspapers for the daring rescue of a wounded comrade during the battle of Rich Mountain in West Virginia. In June 1864 he ran a heavy head wound during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, spent the rest of the summer on leave and returned in september back in active service. In 1865 he waved off, but already in 1866, he returned to under the command of General Babcock Hares to keep an inspection tour along the forts on the Great Plains, of Omaha in Nebraska to San Francisco in California where the expedition arrived at the end of the year. Bierce was appointed brevet major, major without the corresponding payment at the rank. ==Private Life[ Edit] == Ambrose married in 1872 with Mary Ellen ("Molly") Day. The couple had two sons, Day (1872-1889) and Leigh (1874-1901) and a daughter, Helen (1875-1940). Both sons died before their father. Day died of gunshot wounds suffered in a brawl to a woman; Leigh died of pneumonia as a result of his alcoholism. Bierce left his wife In 1888 after the discovery of a bunch of compromising letters from a lover. The separation was finally pronounced in 1904. ==Journalistic career[ Edit] == <p len="935" style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">After his discharge from service, earned his living as a writer for various newspapers such as Bierce The San Francisco News Letter, The Argonaut, the Overland Monthly and The Californian. Bierce traveled for health reasons In 1872 to London, where he wrote satirical magazine Fun, a competitor of the better known Punch and became acquainted with various literary greats from the London of that time.

<p len="618" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">After his return in 1875, he moved back to San Francisco and wrote for the satirical magazine The Wasp, where the first parts of his later so famous the Devils Dictionary appeared. From 1879 to 1880 he lived in South Dakota where he earned his living as a Director of the New York Mining Company.However, after this company went bankrupt, Bierce returned back to San Francisco and resumed his journalistic career.

<p len="1436" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">In 1887 he published a columnentitled The Prattle (idle talk) and became one of the first regular columnists in the service of William Randolph Hearst. In this position he grew into one of the most influential journalists of the west coast. He remained until 1906 connected with the Hearst Newspapers. Because of his penchant for biting social satire and his razor-sharp pen Bierce was a highly controversial writer. So he caused a riot by to torpedo a law that the debts of the railways ($ 130 million) to the State kwijtschold, which by a few corrupt members of Congress was submitted. When he was asked by a representative of the railway barons "are to call" price, Bierce in his newspaper replied "130 million dollars and if I happen not in the city (Washington D.C.) am, you can give that to my good friend: the Minister of finance". ==Literary works<span class="mw-editsection" len="337" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == Ambrose Bierce<p len="896" style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">Bierce has published several books and many short stories, in which he presents his war experiences in writing, such as An occurrence at Owl Creek,Killed at Resaca and Chickamauga, but has also written several volumes of poetry. His Fantastic Fables was a forerunner of the grotesquerie that at the beginning of the twentieth century a literary genre in itself was Edgar Allan Poe, of which the best known representative.

<p len="548" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">His most famous work, The Devil's Dictionary, first appeared as individual contributions in The Wasp. A collection was published in book form in 1906 under the title The Cynics Word Book and got pass (officially) the name which Bierce himself preferred band of his collected works as an independent seventh in 1909 saw the light.

<p len="135" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">He is considered a master of the "Pure English". His careful choice of words and concise style are still appreciated. ==Disappearance<span class="mw-editsection" len="332" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p len="1730" style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">In October 1913 Bierce left Washington D.C. to tour the battlefields of the civil war. When he entered Mexico via El Paso, that at that time by the revolution of Pancho Villa in turmoil was, he joined as an observer and journalist at the revolutionaries and took in that role part in the battle of Tierra Blanca. It is certain that he travel with them to Chihuahua, where he on 26 december 1913 wrote a last letter to a friend. From that moment on Ambrose Bierce disappeared without trace. The date of his death is usually displayed with "1914?"

<p len="206" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.3636360168457px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302948px;">Although in the course of time have done countless theories about his disappearance, the round is never found a trace of him. In one of his last letters to his cousin Lora writes Bierce: ==Trivia<span class="mw-editsection" len="327" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] ==
 * Bierce supplied with The Devils Dictionary are a large number of citations for the Unix fortune program.