Bierce, Ambrose (Gwinnett)

Ambrose Bierce, detail of an oil painting by J.H.E. Partington.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born June 24, 1842, Meigs county, Ohio, U.S.—died 1914, Mexico?) U.S. newspaperman, satirist, and short-story writer. Not long after serving in the Civil War, he became a newspaper columnist and editor in San Francisco, specializing in attacks on frauds of all sorts. Among his books are Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891; revised as In the Midst of Life), which includes “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”; Can Such Things Be? (1893); and The Devil's Dictionary (1906), a volume of ironic definitions. Tired of American life, he went in 1913 to Mexico, then in the middle of a revolution, and mysteriously disappeared, possibly killed in the 1914 siege of Ojinaga.

Bierce, Ambrose (Gwinett) (1842–?1914) writer, journalist, editor; born in Horse Cave Creek, Ohio. His service in the Civil War provided him with both material for some of his finest stories and the disillusioned attitude that colored much of his writing. After the war he went to San Francisco where he worked as an editor while writing for various magazines (1866–72). He then spent three years in London as an editor (1872–75) and published many stories, old and new. Returning to San Francisco as an editor and newspaper columnist (1887–96), "Bitter Bierce" became the West Coast's leading (and dictatorial) literary arbiter before going to Washington, D.C., as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers (1897–1909). In 1906 he published the Cynic's Word Book (later retitled The Devil's Dictionary), a collection of his sardonic-ironic definitions. Never at ease in America, he set off for Mexico in 1913, apparently to find Pancho Villa, the Mexican rebel, and was last seen that December; it is not known exactly when and how Bierce died.

Bierce, Ambrose

(1842–1914) acerbic journalist for San Francisco Examiner; nicknamed “Bitter Bierce.” [Am. Lit.: Hart, 77]

See : Cynicism

Bierce, Ambrose

(1842–1914?) journalist and short story writer; disappeared into Mexico in 1913. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 294]

See : Disappearance