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.
Ambrose Bierce, detail of an oil painting by J.H.E. Partington.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.