Original Ambrose Bierce Site
The field was too small for his genius. —Gertrude Atherton

DEFINITIVE AMBROSE BIERCE SITE — ORIGINAL ART, FICTION, DRAMA, ESSAYS —
SINCE 1996

“...I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is ‘Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like ‘Sophisticated Lady’ by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.” —Kurt Vonnegut


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Cogito ergo cogito sum:
I think; therefore,
I think I am.

—Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce
CHRONOLOGY
HERE

Bierce

Facebook Group

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The Ambrose Bierce Site invites original short fiction, articles, essays, poetry, art related to the mind and myth of Ambrose Bierce.
contact
Don Swaim



...about Bierce HERE


ORIGINAL
STUFF
by Don Swaim


a novel

Deliverance of Sinners
Essays & Sundry on Ambrose Bierce

Return to Carcosa
21st Century Road Trip

fiction

World's Funniest Humanist
essay

Ambrose Bierce and
The Little Johnny Stories

article

The First Bierce Scholar
Vincent Starrett

article

Poet of the Skies,
Prophet of the Sun

Bierce, Hearst, Sterling
fiction

Ambrose Bierce &
the Little Blue Books

article

Stephen Vincent Benét, Ambrose Bierce, and Me
Two Fabulists
article

The Blasphemer Robert G. Ingersoll
Why He Mattered to Bierce
article

Ambrose & Henry
H.L Mencken's debt to Bierce
article

Edwin Markham: The Man Who Irked Bierce
(and wrote about zombies)
article

Bierce's Typewriter
article

Ambrose Bierce Alley
Photo-essay

Bierce Assails Politicos
Speculation

Ambrose Bierce on the
on the Trump election

article

My Dossier
article

Bierce on Terrorism
Speculation

Bierce on the Notion of God
Mysticism




ORIGINAL BIERCE ART
Kathryn Landis

Tom Redman



FOUR BIERCE OPERAS:

St. Ambrose
Rodney Waschka II
  • Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
    Thea Musgrave
  • Mocking Bird
    Thea Musgrave
  • Difficulty of Crossing a Field
    David Lang
    Mac Wellman


    Gregory Peck as Bierce
    (In Old Gringo)


    EXCLUSIVES

    Bierce's First Love
    Article by Cary McWilliams 1932

    Sleep as Trauma
    Bierce's Civil War Head Wound

    Article by Kyle Keeler

    Bierce & People's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos
    Podcast by DB Spitzer

    The Last Dream
    (For Ambrose Bierce)

    Poetry by Leigh Blackmore

    Occurrence at Ojinaga
    Fiction by Ron Hefner

    And As to Drink
    Fiction by K. A. di'Gaetano

    My Hunt for Ambrose Bierce
    by Leon Day

    Bierce is Buried Here
    by James Leinert

    Ohio Honors Native Son
    by Don Swaim

    Rob Holmes as Bierce


    Finding Bierce's Ohio's Birthplace
    by Margaret Parker

    Bullet,Grave, Memory
    Bierce Meets Billy the Kid

    Fiction by Wayne MacDonald

    Ambrose Bierce and the Joy of Outrage
    Essay by Jack Matthews

    The Poetry of Ambrose Bierce
    Essay by Jack Matthews

    Almighty God Bierce
    Two-act play by Ed Scutt<>

    The Last Stand
    of Ambrose Bierce

    Two-act play by Rob Foster


    FOR THE AHKOOND
    Science-fiction by Ambrose Bierce

    BIERCE JOURNALISM ARCHIVE
    Archives of American
    Journalism site>

    PROJECT GUTENBERG
    Includes first book,
    A Fiend's Delight (1872)

    AMBROSE BIERCE
    AT HOME
    by Helen Bierce
    American Mercury
    Dec. 1933

    WALTER NEALE
    BIERCE BIO
    Reviewed by H.L. Mencken, American Mercury
    Sept. 1929

    NOT FAMOUS?
    Bierce Magazine Covers


    Bierce Questions, Comments?
    FACEBOOK

    The old Bierce message board from Bravenet, with its annoying ads, dating back to 2001 has been replaced by the Bierce Facebook Group. If you have questions or comments about Bierce, simply join us at Facebook. Just click to join. The old message board remains up as an archive only.



    SOME OF DON'S
    OTHER SITES

  • WCBS Appreciation Site 
  • Book Beat: The Podcast 
  • Radio Days  
  • Aspinwall High School  
  • Ambrose Bierce Site  
  • Bucks Writers Workshop 
  • Errata  
  • Steinbeck in Bucks Co  
  • Pennsylvania Sunsets  
  • Growing Up in WW II  
  • My Houses: Where I've Been  
  • Fighting the Hun in WW I  
  • Stuart Cummings Ripley Site
  • Swaim Name in History
  • The Swaim in America



    PC Magazine's
    BEST OF THE INTERNET
    Wired for Books.
    Nov. 20, 2007



    PEARL S. BUCK FICTION AWARD

    Don Swaim, founder of the Ambrose Bierce Site, won first prize for his short story, "Dearest Friend, Annie," which focuses on the relationship between Walt Whitman and Anne Gilchrist.
    Pearl Buck, author of The Good Earth, won the Nobel Prize for literature, and her Pennsylvania, home is a National Historic Landmark.

    Pearl S. Buck International



  • A Bierce Glossary of Religious Terms
    Mysticism

    Bierce vs Jack London
    A Reconstruction

    Bierce & Pancho Villa
    Fiction

    The Wickedest Man in
    San Francisco

    Fiction

    Love and Kisses:
    Bierce & Oscar Wilde

    Fiction

    Bierce Duels with
    H.L. Mencken

    Fiction

    The Pseudonyms of Ambrose Bierce
    Satire

    Marfa Lights Mystery Solved
    Speculation

    Let There Be Light: kaleidoscopes
    Essay

    Ambrose & Gertrude
    Bierce vs. Gertrude Atherton
    One-act play





    THE DEFINITIVE
    INTERVIEW

    Don Swaim's exhaustive interview with S.T. Joshi, world's leading authority on Lovecraft, Bierce, sci-fi, horror, and weird fiction in general:
    READ

    Jack Matthews &
    Don Swaim Debate
    Ambrose Bierce

    WOUB Ohio University

    HERE


    Aug 27, 2023
    “Camels and Christians accept their burdens kneeling.” —Ambrose Bierce


    Bierce as adapted from the artist Sanjin Masic of Sarajevo.


    BACK IN PRINT!
    Originally published in 1998 by the University of Tennessee Press, Ambrose Bierce's most revealing self-portrait, A SOLE SURVIVOR: BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, is now in paperback from Joshi's own Sarnath Press. Obtain HERE


    THE SCHULTZ INTERVIEW
    Ambrose Bierce: Moments of Fire!


    S.T. Joshi, David E. Schultz
    With word that David E. Schultz and his literary partner S.T. Joshi had published the twelfth volume of Bierce's Collected Essays and Journalism, I cornered Schultz to find out about the scholarship involved. I pose the questions, Schultz the answers. HERE




    The latest issue Collected Essays and Journalism
    available at AMAZON


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    WHO WAS DONN PIATT AND WHY DID BIERCE CARE ABOUT HIM?

    Donn Piatt

    The eleventh edition of Ambrose Bierce Collected Essays and Journalism, Volume 11: 1881, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi includes a savage epitaph dedicated to Piatt (who was still alive). Piatt, now mostly forgotten, fought in the Civil War, became a politician, wrote books, and published a newspaper, all of which captured Bierce's attention. Read about Piatt HERE

    Joshi and Schultz are the world's leading scholars on Ambrose Bierce. Over the years there may be as many as 50 volumes. It's a work of monumental scholarship. Vol. 11 available at AMAZON


    THE PARROT THAT (ALMOST) RULED THE WORLD
    A fan-tan game in San Fran's Chinatown delivers the smartest entity on earth

  • A short story by Don Swaim about Ambrose Bierce and Jum,
    the parrot with all the secrets.

  • read HERE


  • FORTHCOMING FROM
    HIPPOCAMPUS PRESS

    Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. Dan Sauer's striking cover design incorporates illustrations for Sterling's best-known poem "A Wine of Wizardry" in an issue of Cosmopolitan in 1907. The poem, which Bierce received in 1904, had been rejected by the Atlantic, Harpers, Scribners, Century, and the Metropolitan before Bierce finally placed it in the Hearst-owned journal in which Bierce had a column.


    FOLLOW THE CHECKLIST FOR WHAT YOU
    NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AMBROSE BIERCE


    HE NEVER F-ING SAID IT!
    “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
    &
    “The covers of this book are too far apart.”

    The geography quote attributed to Ambrose Bierce has been knocking around the Internet for years. [Google shows 159,000 entries for it.] I’ve never found the origin for “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” nor has David E. Schultz, who along with S.T. Joshi, has created a voluminous database of Bierce’s works. Schultz told The Ambrose Bierce Site: “I’ve looked high and low through my electronic archive of Bierce’s writings (c. 4.5 million words) and have never come across this. I’ve found numerous attributions to Bierce on the Web, but believe that Paul Rodriguez [Mexican-born stand-up comedian] is probably the originator.” It’s one of those quotes that sounds like Bierce but isn’t.

    Nor do I believe Bierce ever said, "The covers of this book are too far apart." If he did, I've never found the source, nor the name of the book to which he allegedly referred. The line is often repeated as though it's a given that Bierce authored that devastating put-down, but even if he didn't it's almost too good a line not to award it to him.

    That said, I found an excellent site called QUOTE INVESTIGATOR that goes into super detail about Bierce's alleged book covers quote. Essentially, it says, the quote is second-hand by the humorist Irvin S. Cobb in 1923 — long after Bierce's death. Many others picked it up. This is the best debunking I've seen of the Bierce quote, which has also been attributed to Mark Twain and, yes, even to Jack Benny. —DS


    __________________


    Buy HERE

    Deliverance of Sinners provides a comprehensive, engaging, and often humorous look at a truly titanic figure in American letters, and I’ve been happy to pore through it again and again.”
       —William J. Donahue, editor Philadelphia/Suburban Life magazines.
    “Swaim is a remarkable researcher, storyteller, literary artiste, and pontificator here.” —Chris Bauer, author of 2 Street
    REVIEW BY GREYDOGTALES

    ACCOLADES
  • PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
  • OLDSTYLE TALES PRESS
  • RISINGSHADOW

  • “...one of the most intriguing novels published this year. It gives fans of classic weird fiction a unique and enjoyable glimpse into the life of Ambrose Bierce. Because Don Swaim is a devoted expert on all things Biercean.” — Seregil of Rhiminee

    “The writing is elegiac at points, sardonic at others, and—for fans of his supernatural fiction—often gripping with terror.”
    —Michael Grant Kellermeyer, Old Style Press


  • Edited with an introduction by S. T. Joshi
  • Book design by David E. Schultz
  • Cover Art by Jared Boggess

    PREVIEW
    S.T. Joshi's Introduction to
    The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story: HERE


    AMAZON.COM
    HIPPOCAMPUS PRESS
    BARNES&NOBLE

    eBOOK

    Sandra Carey Cody interviews Don Swaim about
    The Assassination on Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story
    HERE






  • FROM CENTIPEDE PRESS
    Ambrose Bierce: The Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction. This huge new hardcover edition of Bierce's weird fiction, 727 pages, edited by S.T. Joshi, includes most of Bierce's familiar fiction, but many of his lesser known stories as well. Much of his Civil War writing is included because, Joshi says, "...it can be said that the Civil War tales embody some of Bierce's most chilling moments of psychological terror." AVAILABLE HERE .


    BIERCE FICTION IN DEFINITIVE EDITION
  • Volume 1: Tales of Psychological and Supernatural Horror
  • Volume 2: Tales of the Civil War and Tales of the Grotesque
  • Volume 3: Tall Tales and Satirical Sketches; Political Fantasies and
             Future Histories
    From Hippocampus Press




  • WORLD'S FUNNIEST HUMANIST

    Drawing of Ambrose Bierce by David Levine used with permission.
    © Matthew & Eve Levine 2012. Limited edition prints and licensing opportunities
    available through D. Levine Ink

    Ambrose Bierce may not have used the term “humanism” back in his day—but we can now safely say he was the funniest humanist of all. My essay on Bierce and humanism: Read HERE



    EVEN GREAT WRITERS
    SOMETIMES MAKE MISTAKES


    Execrable! Ambrose Bierce and the “Little Johnny” stories
    HERE



    __________________

    EXCLUSIVE TO THE AMBROSE BIERCE SITE!

    HOW AMBROSE BIERCE DISAPPEARED (MAYBE)
    June 24, 1842 to – ?
    by Leon Day

    Once upon a time, there was a brave soldier. His specialty was going in front of the Union armies with small units and making maps and sketches of the tricky spots on the proposed route, under fire. But he is not famous for this.

    Then he went West, exploring, and made the first maps of the Black Hills that were useful. He taught himself to write by reading the classics at a boring job at the San Francisco Mint, and broke into newspaper work. He became the top columnist in San Francisco in a time when the writer stood behind his work with a gun, not a lawyer. He married rich, went to England, learned a lot from the writers there, and taught some tricks himself. But this is just a footnote.

    He wrote the first Civil War fiction that included the terror and put the glory in its place. It was so good that a whole generation of professional officers became abject fans. And every time the press fomented a war fever, he wrote on military subjects with a stark clarity that never forgot that the final result would be flowing blood and shattered bone. But this is poorly remembered.

    He wrote fine poetry, often to a deadline, and trained a generation of poets -- became a sort of literary cult leader. But this is a matter for English professors.



    And he was funny politically, too, always opposed to demagogy and privilege alike, showing no faith that the common man could command politics, or the rich man transcend his greed. Split the difference between George Orwell and Herbert Spencer and you might approach the ideas of this writer who reached millions through the Hearst press. But this interests very few.

    Thus, Ambrose Bierce is best remembered today because nobody knows what happened to him. He went into the whirlpool of the Mexican Revolution in December 1913, and never popped up. He was good at writing spooky stories, and four or five have been hitched to his star.


    San Francisco Bulletin, March 24, 1920


    Leon Day
    About Leon Day

    This amateur historian sought to locate Bierce's remains in the Mexican desert -- and published his findings on The Ambrose Bierce Site. Unfortunately, he came up short. The colorful, eccentric Day -- whose coffee cup was often filled with more than coffee -- died in 2011 without proving his theory.

    His obituary in the Austin, Texas, Statesman HERE

    Read Day's well thought-out, six-part exposition on Bierce's disappearance HERE



    The Many Deaths of Ambrose Bierce
    Forrest Gander in The Paris Review of Oct. 17, 2014, writes of the innumerable theories about Bierce's mysterious death. "According to witnesses, Bierce died over and over again, all over Mexico..." Read HERE
  • Ambrose Bierce and the David Lang Hoax
    In 1880, an Alabama farmer mysteriously disappears -- allegedly in full view of his family and neighbors. Was it a hoax? Did Ambrose Bierce base his famous story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" on the tale of the vanishing farmer? Read: HERE
  • "Collecting Ambroses"
    Unintended whimsy by
    CHARLES FORT: HERE
  • The Oxoxoco Bottle
    Author Gerald Kersh came up with a yarn in the 1950s about Bierce being fattened up by cannibals in Mexico. It appeared in Kersh's story collection Men Without Bones and was republished in The Saturday Evening Post. Details HERE [scroll down] .


    Nuggets and Dust by "Dod Grile," Ambrose Bierce's second book, was published under his pseudonym by Chatto and Windus in London in 1871, when Bierce was an expatriate. Its subtitle is "Panned Out in California," loosely arranged by "J. Milton Sloluck," another of Bierce's pseudonyms. It was a cheap paperback showing on the cover a miner panning gold and holding a knife. In this first and only edition (until now) there were ads on the back cover for Crosby's Balsamic Cough Elixir and Dr. Rooke's Oriental Pills and Solar Elixir, plus several pages of ads at the front.

    Essentially, the book reprinted bits and pieces from Bierce's "Town Crier" columns in the San Francisco News-Letter as well as more current jottings. It was neither physically nor literarily a handsome product, and Bierce never republished it. The contents might be described as amusing trifles. It's now a rarity for Bierce collectors. A recent Internet search located only two copies for sale, both at high prices and in poor condition. in 2017, Didcot House, which appears to be based in the U.K., came out with a paperback edition using Amazon's Create Space.

    Now, a firm called Reink Books of Delhi, India, is offering a paperback edition for $15.07 with no overseas shipping fee. Strangely, the Reink edition, distributed by S N Books World, identifies the author nowhere in the book, merely a plain cover with the title and an ID number. The book is said to have been reprinted from the original edition, and appears to be a facsimile, evidence of what this rare Bierce item actually looked like when the pages were opened.


  • From the aforementioned, below is a sample of Ambrose Bierce's tongue-in-cheek cynicism and misanthropy in a section titled "Man in Quantity" in which he takes to task all mankind:

    It is impossible for one to look at him without a lively disgust, similar to that inspired by the spectacle of a tangled web of rattlesnakes thawing and reeking in the spring sunlight. A single individual of the species is intolerable, but put a score of them into close contact, and straightway they shall begin to enact you so varied and multifold unpleasantness -- so distracting and displeasing pranks -- a myriad of so fathomless abominations, that one would fain be a dog, if that dog only were any better or worse -- which they are not.

    We never look upon man without thinking of that horrid -- perhaps fabled -- animal that is clean-limbed, and sweet, and gracious, and comely, but which no sooner touches one of its kind than it begins to expire a noxious odor.... Immortal, are you, yahoo? Godlike? In the image of your Maker? And yet you thieve, you beat wives, and you die in all manner of unseemly ways!

    You give lectures and give birth; you have collisions, and fires, and divine service, and the small-pox. Talk not to us, monster, of your godlike attributes; we know you for a most pestilent and forbidding beast requiring the constant purification of water, and oft-renewed anointing with perfumes.

    --Ambrose Bierce



    EDITOR MEETS THE MASTER
    Composite illustration by K.A. Silva. Don Swaim meets Ambrose Bierce in the library of William Randolph Hearst's Castle, San Simeon, California. click to enlarge

    __________________




    The Ambrose Bierce Site invites original articles, fiction, poetry, art
    related to the mind and myth of Ambrose Bierce.


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