AMBROSE BIERCE (June 24,1842–?) Ohio-born writer and journalist who vanished in 1913 while attempting to join Pancho Villa in Mexico. Acclaimed for his Civil War and supernatural stories, as well as for his legendary wit, best appreciated by reading his Devil's Dictionary. Bierce suffered no fools, spared no enemies, and spat in the face of man-made gods and those who prayed to them. His definition of astrology: "The science of making the dupe see stars." Except for H. L. Mencken, Bierce's intellectual heir, there's never been a man of letters like Ambrose Bierce. His fate's not only a mystery, but he remains an enigma. This site will make Ambrose Bierce better understood, and for those new to Bierce the best place to start is with the: Ambrose Bierce Chronology.

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Boston Globe columnist Jan Freeman is the author of the forthcoming Ambrose Bierce's "Write It Right": The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers. In a column in The New York Times Magazine, Freeman examines Bierce's strict and sometimes arbitrary rules of language. Go to Bierce's Bugbears.

EDITOR MEETS "THE MASTER"

Composite illustration by K.A. Silva pictures Don Swaim, who edits The Ambrose Bierce Site, and Bierce in the library of William Randolph Hearst's Castle, San Simeon, California. Note the incongruity of the ornate cross behind Bierce. click to enlarge

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Fiction by K. A. di'Gaetano, in which Bierce returns to walk the streets of Montgomery, Alabama as...a vampire! Go to And As to Drink.

Original watercolor of the Vampire Bierce by Kathryn Landis. click to enlarge

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Ambrose Bierce Alley Photo-essay by Don Swaim. How a graffiti-blighted San Francisco alley came to be named after Bierce.

FINAL BIERCE HOME ON NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

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The Olympia Apartments, 1368 Euclid Street, NW, at 14th Street, in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, DC, won the Mayor's award for Excellence in Design in 2005. Bierce lived in the apartments, still a rental building, from at least December 16, 1901 through October 3, 1913. History Matters, founded in 1999, helped to nominate the building to the National Register of Historic Places. A Washington Times reporter, who interviewed Bierce in August 1902, describes his apartment as "hung and carpeted in red and containing a Turkish couch piled high with pillows, a table full of interesting books, and a quaint little sideboard filled with a mixture of curious glasses, decanters, and a chafing dish." George Horton, an acquaintance, said that Bierce held Sunday morning breakfasts in his apartment for "literary and brain workers," and served coffee made in a peculiar pot shaped like a melon.

FILM BASED ON BIERCE TALE Written and directed by Leor Baum, the short film is an updated treatment of Ambrose Bierce's "The Moonlit Road," a story of surmised infidelity, murder, and the supernatural. watch video teaser. Baum says, "This is a modern adaptation that is meant to stay true to the original story while incorporating expanded themes and situations." The Indie Film Reviewer writes: "When Ambrose Bierce wrote 'The Moonlit Road' in 1907, he surely did not think it would have been adapted into a modern motion picture a hundred years later... Modern yet poetic, the audience is taken through several time travels." Go to: Moonlit Road

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Leon Day

Amateur Historian Seeks to Crack Bierce Puzzle Obsessed by Bierce's 1913 disappearance, Austin, Texas, native Leon Day has spent years trying to solve the mystery. Now, Day has released his findings in a near book-length article that also traces his own odyssey into the Mexican desert to locate Bierce's bones. In six parts. Go to: LEON DAY'S HUNT

Visual Artist Adopts Bierce Motif
Stephen G. Rhodes applies sculpture, photographs, drawings, and a double-screen video based on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Go to The New York Times. Rhodes' bio and more images here

THREE BIERCE FILMS Produced and directed by Don Maxwell, with Campbell Scott as Bierce, Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories made its screen debut in Kansas City on September 8, 2006. Its DVD release was November 7, 2006. Independently produced in Kansas City as a trilogy, the film includes a truncated version of Michigan filmmaker's Brian James Egan's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which is integrated seamlessly into the Maxwell film[see below]. For details about Maxwell's film with additional pictures, go to: Market Wire. click to enlarge click for info about film First screened before a small audience in Lynchburg, VA, this film based on the Ambrose Bierce Civil War masterpiece formally premiered at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor in 2003. NOTE: Now part of the film trilogy Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories, although truncated. [see above]. Read the original version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgea psychological drama of a man who sees his life flash before him as Union troops hang him as a spy from a railroad bridge. The Eyes of the Panther (2005) is independent director Mike Barton's first film. Based on an 1892 Ambrose Bierce story, the two-hour film, shot entirely in Los Angeles, is about a young pioneer couple caught up in terror and madness in the wilderness. Watch the trailer at ifilm.com. Now available on DVD. Read the original story at horrormasters.com as a pdf file. "The Eyes of the Panther" was filmed previously in 1990 as an episode of the television anthology Shelly Duvall's Nightmare Classics. Kelly Vincent in "The Eyes of the Panther"

Five Questions About: Ambrose Bierce
DaRK PaRTY ReVIEW, a Boston-based online literary magazine, queries Bierce Site webmaster Don Swaim about the life and disappearance of the legendary curmudgeon.

BIERCE ON FAILED FLAG AMENDMENT It's clear what Ambrose Bierce would have thought of 2006's pandering effort to weaken The Bill of Rights by some congressional politicians, who attempted to enact a constitutional amendment banning flag desecretion. Old Glory may be a symbol for many, but Bierce had little use for symbols: “Something that is supposed to typlify or stand for something else.” He defined the flag as: “A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships.”

Jack London

Legendary Ambrose Bierce-Jack London Drinking Bout Reconstructed By Don Swaim. Based on actual events taking place in the summer of 1910, as Bierce engaged in a legendary drinking bout with Socialist Jack London at the Bohemian Club's summer camp on the Russian River, Sonoma County, California. While the specific details of the debate are lost to history, Swaim attempts to reconstruct them using the actual words of Bierce and London.

Bierce gravestone, Sierrra Mojada, Mexico click to enlarge

Bierce Tombstone in Mexican Desert James Lienert, who theorizes Bierce was executed and buried in the graveyard of the dusty Mexican town of Sierra Mojada in 1914, installed a marker to memorialize the great writer in 2004. The idea is intriguing -- but there are questions. The Real Thing?

Damper on First Major Tribute To Bierce (It Poured) Rain forced the slender crowd inside, as the Ohio Bicentennial Commission dedicated in 2003 a historic marker to Ambrose Bierce, first major formal recognition of Bierce in the country. A local historical society in Meigs County, place of Bierce's birth, has also erected in honor of the bard a plaque, which hangs in Ohio's oldest standing courthouse.

Photo by Billi Bentley. Click to enlarge

My Quest to Find the Birthplace of Ambrose Bierce
Historian Margaret Parker explains how she resolved her skepticism over Bierce's Ohio birthplace

THREE BIERCE IMPERSONATORS Stephen Mellor as Ambrose Bierce Marc Robinson in the Village Voice reviews the Mac Wellman play, Bitter Bierce, or The Friction We Call Grief. And a review by Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times. Stephen Mellor as Bierce Ed Scutt as Bierce Almighty God Bierce Ed Scutt Portrays Ambrose Bierce Ed Scutt's two-act, one-man play is posted here in its entirety -- and serves as a virtual biography of Ambrose Bierce. Click on the title above to read it. Joshua Kane's Gothic at Midnight In his one-man show Kane draws from the works of such literary giants as Bierce, Dickens, Poe, and Shaw. Joshua Kane as Bierce

A Bullet, A Grave, A Memory Fiction by Wayne MacDonald. In this story, set in 1879, Ambrose Bierce, while on a mining expedition to New Mexico, hooks up with Jesse James and Billy the Kid. In the form of a letter from Bierce to H.L. Mencken.

Billy the Kid

Pancho Villa

Mystery of Ambrose Bierce At the age of 71 Bierce crossed into Mexico to join Pancho Villa's revolutionaries. In a letter to his neice Lora, Bierce wrote: "Goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stars. To be a gringo in Mexico -- ah, that is euthanasia. " Just before he entered war-torn Mexico he again wrote Lora, "I shall not be here long enough to hear from you, and don't know where I shall be next. Guess it doesn't matter much. Adios, Ambrose." His final letter was dated Dec. 26, 1913, postmarked Chihuahua. In it, he said he expected to leave the next day, partly by rail, for Ojinaga, where Villa was poised to attack a cornered federal army. It was the last ever heard from Ambrose Bierce. His disappearance sparked investigations, wild speculation, but no answers. The novel The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes is a fictionalized treatment of Bierce's disappearance. Glenn Willeford has written a fascinating account of Bierce's presumed death in Mexico. Go to Ojinaga.

Ambrose Bierce and the Civil War

Bierce, a member of the Ninth Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, during the Civil War, won the temporary rank of major by the war's end. He was seriously wounded during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. He also fought at Philippi, Girard Hill, Shiloh, Stones River, Cornith, Missionary Ridge, and Pickett's Mill. His Civil War adventures resulted in the finest, some say the only, fiction to emerge from the Civil War -- and all of it is in print. For stories click on headline above.

Chickamauga. Click picture to view more Bierce art by Tom Redman

Above. Bierce also fought at the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, September 1863. Many years later he wrote one of his most compelling Civil War stories, Chickamauga. It's about an innocent child who stumbles into unspeakable horror during the battle.

Ambrose Bierce and Indiana's Ninth Regiment Infantry Volunteers

Includes an account of Bierce's heroism at Shiloh and Kennesaw Mountain.

Home Again in Indiana Ambrose Bierce may have been born in Ohio, but he and his family left their mark in northern Indiana. For a look at the homes in which they lived go to Bierce Family Homes in Indiana by clicking the headline above.

Walnut Creek, Indiana

Gregory Peck as Bierce	Gregory Peck: A Credible Ambrose Bierce The distinguished film actor, who died in 2003 at the age of 87, portrayed Ambrose Bierce in the 1989 adaptation of Old Gringo, based on the novel by Carlos Fuentes. The film, directed by Luis Puenzo, also featured Jane Fonda and Jimmy Smits. In it, Bierce, a spinster (Fonda), and one of Pancho Villa's lieutenants (Smits) cross paths in the Mexican Revolution of 1913. Epic scale drama with rich atmosphere. For details about the film go to Internet Movie Data Base.

The persona of Ambrose Bierce predominates in Richard Samuel West's illustrated history of The San Francisco Wasp. Bierce served on the satirical weekly from 1881 to 1886, making pungent observations in his "Prattle" column and at one point becoming managing editor.

Bierce's editorials in The Wasp were required reading for San Franciscans. An opponent of oppression, a champion of civil liberties, religious freedom, and intellectual honesty, Bierce attacked talentless journalists, unscrupulous businessmen, crooked politicians, and sanctimonious religious leaders. An illustrated history of The Wasp is available at Periodyssey Press.

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