Ambrose Bierce was born in 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were farmers, and he was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom were given names beginning with "A." In 1846 the family moved to Indiana, where Bierce attended primary and secondary school. He entered the Kentucky Military Institute in 1859 and at the outbreak of the Civil War enlisted in the Union Army, serving in such units as the Ninth Indiana Infantry Regiment and Buell's Army of the Ohio. Bierce fought in numerous military engagements, including the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga and in Sherman's March to the Sea. After the war, Bierce traveled with a military expedition to San Francisco, where he left the army in 1867.

Bierce's early poetry and prose appeared in the Caiifornian magazine. In 1868 he was hired as the editor of the News Letter, for which he wrote his famous "Town Crier...