Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American author, journalist, and poet. A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United StatesGrenander, M. E. Ambrose Bierce, Boston: Twayne, 1971, p. 10.Mundt, Whitney R., "Ambrose Bierce" in Dictionary of Literary Biography v. 23: American Newspaper Journalists, 1873–1900, Ashley, Perry J., ed., Detroit: Gale Research, 1983, p. 25. See also Bierce, Ambrose, Skepticism and Dissent: Selected Journalism from 1898–1901, Lawrence I. Berkove, ed., Ann Arbor: Delmas, 1980; Lindley, Daniel, Ambrose Bierce Takes on the Railroad: The Journalist as Muckraker and Cynic, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999; Ramirez, Salvador A.,A Clash of Titans: Ambrose Bierce, Collis Huntington and the 1896 Fight to Refund the Central Pacific's Debt to the Federal Government, San Luis Rey, Calif: Tentacled Press, 2010; Drabelle, Dennis, The Great American Railroad War: How Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris Took on the Notorious Central Pacific Railroad, New York: St. Martin's, 2012; West, Richard Samuel, The San Francisco Wasp: An Illustrated History, Northampton, MA: Periodyssey Press, 2004, pp. 45–59, 310–11. and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction.Grenander, M.E., "Ambrose Bierce" in Dictionary of Literary Biography v. 12: American Realists and Naturalists, Pizer, Donald and Harbert, Earl N., eds., Detroit: Gale Research, 1982, pp. 23–36. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.Dirda, Michael, "Thirteen for Halloween", The American Scholar, October 28, 2015. S. T. Joshi speculates that "he may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produced, and in this regard can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire."Kelley, Rich. "The Library of America interviews S. T. Joshi about Ambrose Bierce". The Library of America. September 2011. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway and others,Joshi, S. T. in Kelley, Rich, "The Library of America interviews S. T. Joshi about Ambrose Bierce," The Library of America e-Newsletter, Sept. 2011. and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic.Grenander, M.E., "Ambrose Bierce" in Dictionary of Literary Biography v. 71: American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1880–1900, Rathbun, John W. and Grecu, Monica M., eds., Detroit: Gale Research, 1988, pp. 27–37. In recent decades, Bierce has gained wider respect as a fabulist and poet.Joshi, S.T., "Introduction," The Collected Fables of Ambrose Bierce, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2000, p. xxi.Grenander, M.E., "Introduction" to Poems of Ambrose Bierce, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, p. xiii.
His book The Devil's Dictionary was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration."Franklin Library 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature 1976–1984", Leather Bound Treasure. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature","An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Ambrose Bierce." Short Story Criticism, v. 72, Joseph Palmisano, ed. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2004, p. 2. and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.Adams, Frederick B.; Winterich, John T.; Johnson, Thomas H.; and McKay, George L. One Hundred Influential American Books Printed Before 1900: Catalogue and Addresses. New York: The Grolier Club, 1947, p. 124.
In 1913, Bierce told reporters that he was travelling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution.Bierce letter from Chihuahua to Blanche Partington dated December 26, 1913. Printed in A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce, S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, eds. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003, pp. 244–46. He disappeared and was never seen again.
Early life Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799–1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce. He was of English ancestry; his forebears came to North America between 1620 and 1640 as part of the Puritan migration.Roy Morris. Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company. His mother was a descendant of William Bradford.Morris, p. 20. He often wrote critically of "Puritan values" and people who "made a fuss" about genealogy.The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8: Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales. He was the 10th of 13 children, all of whom were given names beginning with the letter "A". In order of birth, the Bierce siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia.Robert L. Gale. An Ambrose Bierce Companion, p. 31. His uncle was Ohio politician and military officer Lucius V. Bierce.
His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing. Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat, Warsaw. He left home at 15 to become a printer's devil at a small abolitionist newspaper, the Northern Indianan.
Military career Bierce briefly attended the Kentucky Military Institute until it closed after a fire in 1860. At the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry. He participated in the operations in Western Virginia (1861), was present at the Battle of Philippi (the first organized land action of the war) and received newspaper attention for his daring rescue, under fire, of a gravely wounded comrade at the Battle of Rich Mountain. Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862), a terrifying experience that became a source for several short stories and the memoir "What I Saw of Shiloh".Paul Fatout, "Ambrose Bierce, Civil War Topographer." American Literature 26.3 (1954): 391-400 online.Bjorn Skaptason, "What I Saw of Shiloh: In the Footsteps of Ambrose Bierce." The Ambrose Bierce Project Journal 3 (2007): 1–32 online .
In April 1863 he was commissioned a first lieutenant, and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. As a staff officer, Bierce became known to leading generals such as George H. Thomas and Oliver O. Howard, both of whom supported his application for admission to West Point in May 1864. General Hazen believed Bierce would graduate from the military academy "with distinction" and William T. Sherman also endorsed the application for admission, even though stating he had no personal acquaintance with Bierce.National Archives, RG 94, Entry243, Microfilm M688, Roll 235 In June 1864, Bierce sustained a traumatic brain injury at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and spent the rest of the summer on furlough, returning to active duty in September. His last action of the war was in the Franklin-Nashville campaign. In January 1865 he resigned his commission due to the continued effects of his head injury.
His military career resumed in mid-1866, when he joined General Hazen as part of an expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains. The expedition traveled by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving toward year's end in San Francisco, California. In the city, Bierce was awarded the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army.
Journalism Bierce remained in San Francisco for many years, eventually becoming famous as a contributor or editor of newspapers and periodicals, including The San Francisco News Letter, The Argonaut, the Overland Monthly, The Californian and The Wasp. A selection of his crime reporting from The San Francisco News Letter was included in the Library of America anthology True Crime.
Bierce lived and wrote in England from 1872 to 1875, contributing to Fun magazine. His first book, The Fiend's Delight, a compilation of his articles, was published in London in 1873 by John Camden Hotten under the pseudonym "Dod Grile".
Returning to the United States, he again took up residence in San Francisco. From 1879 to 1880, he traveled to Rockerville and Deadwood in the Dakota Territory, to try his hand as local manager for a New York mining company. When the company failed he returned to San Francisco and resumed his career in journalism.
From January 1, 1881, until September 11, 1885, he was editor of The Wasp magazine, in which he began a column titled "Prattle". He also became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists on William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, eventually becoming one of the most prominent and influential writers and journalists on the West Coast. He remained associated with Hearst Newspapers until 1909.
Railroad refinancing bill
The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies had received large, low-interest loans from the U.S. government to build the first transcontinental railroad. Central Pacific executive Collis P. Huntington persuaded a friendly member of Congress to introduce a bill excusing the companies from repaying the loans, amounting to $130 million (worth $ today).
In January 1896 Hearst dispatched Bierce to Washington, D.C., to foil this attempt. The essence of the plot was secrecy; the railroads' advocates hoped to get the bill through Congress without any public notice or hearings. When the angered Huntington confronted Bierce on the steps of the Capitol and told Bierce to name his price, Bierce's answer ended up in newspapers nationwide: "My price is one hundred thirty million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States."
Bierce's coverage and diatribes on the subject aroused such public wrath that the bill was defeated. Bierce returned to California in November.
In 1899, he moved back to Washington, D.C., and remained a resident until his disappearance in 1913. The best known of his four different residences in the city during this time perhaps is the townhouse at 18 Logan Circle.
McKinley controversy Bierce's long newspaper career was often controversial because of his penchant for biting social criticism and satire. On several occasions his columns stirred up a storm of hostile reaction, which created difficulties for Hearst. One of the most notable of these incidents occurred following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 when Hearst's opponents turned a poem Bierce had written about the assassination of Governor William Goebel of Kentucky in 1900 into a cause célèbre.
Bierce meant his poem to express a national mood of dismay and fear, but after McKinley was shot in 1901, it seemed to foreshadow the crime:
Hearst was accused by rival newspapers—and by then-Secretary of War Elihu Root—of having called for McKinley's assassination. Despite a national uproar that ended Hearst's ambitions for the presidency (and even his membership in the Bohemian Club), Hearst kept employing Bierce.
Literary writer
During his lifetime, Bierce was better known as a journalist than as a fiction writer. His most popular stories were written in rapid succession between 1888 and 1891, in what was characterized as "a tremendous burst of consummate art".M. E. Grenander. Ambrose Bierce. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971. p. 55. Bierce's works often highlight the inscrutability of the universe and the absurdity of death.Ye Qi. Megashift from Plot to Character In American Short Fiction. . p. 48.