By Ambro Bierce
About the author:
Ambro Bierce (1842—1914) was born in Hor Cave Creek, a religious ttlement in Meigs ty, Ohio State, U.S.A. He rinter’s apprentice before enlisting and rving with distin in the Civil War. He launched a journalistic career in California and ti in London from 1872 to 1876. There he rved oaffs of the magazines Fun and the Lantern, tributed to Hood’s ic Almanad uhe pudonym Dod Grile published the books Fiend’s Delight (1872), s and Dust Panned Out in California (1872), and Cobweds form ay Skull (1874). Ba California he became an outstanding tributor to William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. In 1897 he went to Washington, D.C., as a correspo for the Hearst paper.
Bierce won attention as a fi writer with Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), later titled In the Midst of Life (1892, revid and republished 1898), and Such Things Be (1893). Both colles were remi of Edgar Allaales of terror, but Bierce’s stories were often sardoni tone and built to surpri ending. Other books that helped him win the niame “Bitter Bierce” included colles of witty satirical vers, Beetles in Amber (1892) and Shapes of Clay (1903). The ic’s Word Book (1906) retitled The Devil’s Diary when it was reissued in 1911, was a gathering of suct, witty, and usually vinegarish definitions. In Fantastic Fables (1899) Bierce adapted Aesop’s teiques to narratives which moralized about the day’s eic, social, and political dilemmas, and The Shadow on the Dial (1909) brought together a number of disillusioned essays.
Bierce spent veral years editing his Collected Works (12 vols., 1909—1912). In June, 1913, he wrote a friend, “Pretty soon I am going…very far away. I have in mind a little valley in the heart of the Andes, just wide enough for one…. Do you think I shall find my Vale of Peace”. The year Bierce went to Mexico, at that time torn and disrupted by civil war, and he disappeared.
Bierce stresd in his war stories on the psychological and physical impacts and on the meaninglessness of fliticipated Stephen e and the many writers who expresd disillusio after World Wars I and II. Bierce mingled fn phras, Latinate word, and vernacular phrasings in anticlimactid perioditeo express forcibly his ical attitude. His style foreshadowed that of ohe most iial Ameri writers of the skeptical 1920s.
By Ambro Bierce
About the author:
Ambro Bierce (1842—1914) was born in Hor Cave Creek, a religious ttlement in Meigs ty, Ohio State, U.S.A. He rinter’s apprentice before enlisting and rving with distin in the Civil War. He launched a journalistic career in California and ti in London from 1872 to 1876. There he rved oaffs of the magazines Fun and the Lantern, tributed to Hood’s ic Almanad uhe pudonym Dod Grile published the books Fiend’s Delight (1872), s and Dust Panned Out in California (1872), and Cobweds form ay Skull (1874). Ba California he became an outstanding tributor to William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. In 1897 he went to Washington, D.C., as a correspo for the Hearst paper.
Bierce won attention as a fi writer with Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), later titled In the Midst of Life (1892, revid and republished 1898), and Such Things Be (1893). Both colles were remi of Edgar Allaales of terror, but Bierce’s stories were often sardoni tone and built to surpri ending. Other books that helped him win the niame “Bitter Bierce” included colles of witty satirical vers, Beetles in Amber (1892) and Shapes of Clay (1903). The ic’s Word Book (1906) retitled The Devil’s Diary when it was reissued in 1911, was a gathering of suct, witty, and usually vinegarish definitions. In Fantastic Fables (1899) Bierce adapted Aesop’s teiques to narratives which moralized about the day’s eic, social, and political dilemmas, and The Shadow on the Dial (1909) brought together a number of disillusioned essays.