Portrait of Ambrose Bierce
Meet the Author

Ambrose Bierce

American · 1842–1914 · Short-story writer, journalist & satirist

A Civil War veteran turned cynic who wrote some of the coldest, sharpest tales in American letters.

4 StoryBites Editions3 Short stories
Start with An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge → Browse the editions

Why read Ambrose Bierce?

Bierce drew on his own combat experience to write war stories stripped of glory, where death is sudden, ironic, and absurd. His famous 'Owl Creek Bridge' pulls off one of fiction's great narrative tricks, and his 'Devil's Dictionary' remains gleefully bitter. Read him for pitch-black irony and a worldview that trusted nothing and no one.

A life in six dates

  1. 1842Born in Meigs County, Ohio
  2. 1861Enlists and fights in the American Civil War
  3. 1890'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' published
  4. 1906'The Devil's Dictionary' published
  5. 1914Vanishes in Mexico, fate unknown

Themes across the collection

AmericanWar fictionAmerican literatureWarSuspenseWar and conflictDreams and illusionFateGothic horror

The StoryBites Editions

Short stories 3

From the memorial archive 1

Context that actually matters

Civil War realismBierce's firsthand horror of battle produced war fiction utterly free of romance or heroism.
American cynicismHis acid satire and dark irony made him a founding voice of the skeptical, disillusioned strain in U.S. writing.

Influence

Echoes of Ambrose Bierce run through H. P. Lovecraft, Kurt Vonnegut, among many others.