Ambrose Bierce is far more than a regional, or western, writer. He has come to be recognized as an outstanding exemplar of literary impressionism, a counterweight to the emphasis on realism and naturalism embodied in the work of most of his important contemporaries at the end of the nineteenth century. Bierce's writing shows the dependence of external reality on the shifting awareness of a perceiver. He often manipulates the epistemological categories of space and time and builds to an individuals sudden flash of insight, or epiphany. Such features have led critics to cite Bierce as an early postmodernist. Although most of Bierce's notable work was written when he lived in northern California, the writing that might best be termed western is his poetry, particularly his satiric verses directed at Californian figures, and a few of his stories that have California settings.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born 24 June 1842 on...