Ambrose Bierce's Life & Fiction
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The event in Ambrose Bierce's life that has come to dominate it is his leaving of it because of the mystery involved with his disappearance into Mexico. This event has also obscured his writings to a great degree, and even those writings that have continued to have some currency have usually not been tied to Bierce's life to any degree beyond an indication that he was a misanthrope and that this is evident in his works. His life in California and elsewhere in the West, however, has quite obviously been incorporated into a number of his stories, which tell of odd occurrences and ghostly happenings in the setting of mining country. The even that had probably the most profound influence on his writing was the Civil Warm, and he wrote a number of stories of that conflict, often combining his interest in the supernatural with stories of those who died during that national conflict. Bierce was associated with California because that is where he wrote most of his works and where many of those works are set, though he was born in Ohio and grew up in Indiana. His parents were very religious, while young Bierce thought little of religion. the hero of the family was General Lucius Verus Bierce, and Ambrose had a particular relationship with this military figure. The boy left home when he was 15 and thereafter returned only to visit. He worked first as a printer's devil for a newly established newspaper, the Northern Indianan, and after that he spent time at a military school. W
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lying or trumpets blowing, none of the usual muralistic trappings of war literature. The horror of death in war was its loneliness (O'Connor 164).
Bierce's Civil War stories would make up the bulk of his first book of fiction, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, published in 1891. Though the stories had been written over a period of four years, from 1887 to 1891, they showed a remarkable degree of continuity in both theme and tone. There were 19 tales of horror almost evenly divided into two sections called "Soldiers" and "Civilians." Critics praised the work as highly unique, novel, and boldly experimental. The British edition appeared soon after under a different title--In the Midst of Life--and also excluded some stories and included nine others. Subsequent editions have generally followed the English version in both contents and title. These stories constitute a unique legacy in American literature:
Ambrose Bierce was the only writer of note to have served in the Civil War armies. His stories depicting the inhuman slaughter and insanity of battle serve as a rare firsthand record of undeniable historical importance (Saunders 62).
There is little optimism in any of these stories, but those dealing with the wear were the
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Approximate Word count = 1577
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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