BIERCE, satirist, story writer and poet, was born on a farm in Meiggs county (Ohio), on June 24, 1842, the son of Marcus Aurelius and Laura Sherwood Bierce. His father had little money, but a good library, and in stead of a formal education the boy read widely. In 1861 Bierce entered the Union army as a volunteer, served throughout the Civil War, was twice severely wounded, and was breveted a major for bravery. At the end of the war he went to San Francisco; tossed a coin, it is said, to decide his vocation, and entered jour nalism as editor of the News Letter. He went to London in 1872, where, because of his caustic humour revealed in the periodical, Fun, and in three thin volumes, Nuggets and Dust, 1872, The Fiend's Delight, 1873 and Cobwebs from an Empty Skull, 2874, he became famous as "Bitter Bierce," and was engaged by friends of the exiled empress Eugenie to edit The Lantern, a periodical inaugurated to defend her against rumoured newspaper attacks on a visit to England. But her enemies were prematurely frustrated by the arrangement, and Bierce returned to San Francisco (1876).
Except for a short period of mining near Deadwood (S.D.), he remained in San Francisco for 25 years writing for The Wasp and the Argonaut and conducting on the Examiner a weekly column, "Prattle," which has been described as the most eagerly devoured column of causerie ever printed in America, and in which it is said he made and devastated reputations, literary and political.
Throughout the early '8os he wrote short stories without once finding an editor who would publish any of them. In 1891 the publication of a collection of them, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (published as In the Midst of Life, 1899, 1909 and 1927), was financed by a San Francisco merchant. The next year The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter, a masterly rewriting and elabora tion of a translation by G. Adolphe Danziger from the German, was published in Chicago, and Can Such Things Be? a collection of stories of the supernatural, was published in 1893. His book of verse, Black Beetles in Amber, appeared in 1892 ; Fantastic Fables (1899) ; Shapes of Clay (1903) ; The Cynic's Word Book, 1909 (published as The Devil's Dictionary 1925) ; Write It Right, a black list of literary faults (1909) ; and The Shadow on the Dial (1909), a book of essays covering among other things "govern ment, dreams, writers of dialect and dogs." In 1909-12 his col lected works were published in Chicago. In 1896 Bierce was sent to Washington to fight through the Hearst papers the Funding Bill of the Central Pacific railroad, and a year later he returned to Washington to live, corresponding for the New York American and conducting a department in the Cosmopolitan. In 1913, at 71 he left for Mexico "with a pretty definite purpose, which, how ever, is not at present disclosable." He never returned, and, though persistent rumours have appeared in the press as to his death at the hands of Mexican revolutionists, none of them has been substantiated. His death was reported in 1916.
See The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, with an introduction by Bertha Clark Pope (1922) ; Van Wyck Brooks, Emerson and Others (1927) ; V. Starrett, Ambrose Bierce (Chicago, 192o) ; P. H. Boynton, More Contemporary Americans (Chicago, 1927) ; C. McWilliams, Ambrose Bierce (1929) ; W. Neale, Ambrose Bierce (1929). (W. Tv.)