Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce is an author.
Ambrose Bierce fought at Shiloh and Chickamauga, was shot in the head at Kennesaw Mountain, and spent the rest of his life writing the least sentimental war fiction America produced until Hemingway. In San Francisco he was a feared newspaper columnist known as Bitter Bierce, and The Devil's Dictionary collects the cruelty of that job into definitions. He rode into Mexico in 1913 to observe Pancho Villa's army and was never heard from again, which is a better exit than most writers manage to arrange.
Books (32)
- 65 Great Spine Chillers (1982)
- Ghost Stories (1956)
- The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction -- Shorter Seventh Edition (2006)
- 100 Creepy Little Creatures (1994)
- Cuentos de terror (1997)
- Ghost Stories From the Grave (2007)
- The range of literature (1960)
- Ambrose Bierce's Civil War (1956)
- Prentice Hall Literature -- The American Experience (2010)
- Points of View (1968)
- The Story and its Writer -- Third Edition (1991)
- Understanding fiction (1943)
- Flight or Fright (2018)
- The Story and Its Writer -- Ninth Edition (2015)
- Pearson Literature--The American Experience, volume one (2015)
- Great Classic Mysteries II (2012)
- Prentice Hall Literature--The American Experience, Volume 1 (2012)
- Prentice Hall Literature - Georgia - The American Experience (2011)
- Bedtime stories (2011)
- Pearson Literature California -- The American Experience -- Volume One (2010)
- The Story and Its Writer -- Compact Eighth Edition (2010)
- Literature--Fourth Compact Edition (2008)
- Literature--Eighth Edition (2006)
- Wry Harvest (2006)
- The American Short Story [59 stories] (1994)
- Short Fiction, Classic and Contemporary -- Second Edition (1989)
- Fictions--Second Edition (1988)
- Machines That Think (1984)
- The Fantasy Hall of Fame [22 stories] (1983)
- American Short Stories (1965)
Where to start with Ambrose Bierce
The catalogue holds him mainly through anthologies rather than his own collections, which is how a short-story writer survives a century. Ambrose Bierce's Civil War is the exception and the one to seek out, since the war stories are the real achievement. Ghost Stories and The American Short Story [59 stories] carry the horror. Mark Twain's Library of Humor shows the satirist among his peers, and The Fantasy Hall of Fame [22 stories] places him in the genre line.
The war stories
The real achievement, written by a man who had been shot in the head at Kennesaw Mountain. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge turns up in nearly every American short-fiction anthology ever assembled, which is why these are here.
The horror
Michael Dirda ranked him with Poe and Lovecraft, and the horror stories are colder than either. They travel through anthologies rather than his own collections, which is how a nineteenth-century short-story writer stays in print.
The satirist
He was a feared San Francisco columnist known as Bitter Bierce, and The Devil's Dictionary is the distillate of that job. The anthologies here place him among the humorists, the fantasists and the early science fiction writers at once.
Ambrose Bierce on CrossBinge
- Companion guide: Cosmic Horror