Ambrose Bierce
Born June 24, 1842
Meigs City, Ohio
Died 1913 or 1914
Place of death unknown
Civil War veteran who authored
several short stories about the Civil War
Ambrose Bierce was one of America's best-known writers of the nineteenth century. As a Union soldier during the Civil War, Bierce witnessed the violence and horror of war firsthand. After the war ended, he drew upon those wartime experiences to write a number of popular short stories and essays. In addition, he ranked as one of the country's most famous newspaper columnists during the 1880s and 1890s.
Growing Up in Poverty
Ambrose Bierce was born in southeastern Ohio in 1842, but he spent most of his childhood in Indiana. He was the tenth of thirteen children born to Marcus Aurelius and Laura Bierce, poor farmers who struggled to provide food and clothing for their children. Ambrose spent a good deal of his childhood tackling farm chores under the watchful supervision of his disciplinarian mother. As a result, he received very little formal schooling. But his father loved to read books, and young Ambrose borrowed volumes from his father's modest library whenever he could. Literature thus became hisonly source of relief from a childhood that he later recalled with great bitterness.
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