Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?)

He was born in Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, from a strictly religious family.
He left his home at the age of sixteen for starting off his career as a printer's devil at the Northen Indianian, but forfeited this position because he was falsely accused of stealing money.
His family insisted that he should enroll in the Kentucky Military Institute; thus, the knowledge of military strategy supported him in the Civil War where he had been fighting since 1861.
In 1866 he moved to California where he collaborated with newspapers such as News Letter, Californian, the Atla California, the Golden Era, the weekly News-Letter and California Advertiser.
In 1872 he moved to England for four years; later on, he went back to America to write for the San Francisco Examiner. The new owner of this newspaper was William Randolph Hearst, who had an eye for talented journalists like Bierce.
The fame and reputation of Bierce grew and in the years 1887-1906, the columns of Bierce were known as The Prattler. In 1897 he went to Washington to work for another newspaper owned by Hearst.
He often wrote in defense of Jews, Negroes and Chineses.
His personal life was a failure: he divorced in 1904; his elder son committed suicide at the age of sixteen; his youngest son died of alcoholism at the age of thirty.
In 1914 he disappeared in Mexico, where a civil war was breaking out and since then his destiny remains unknown. His best known works are The Devil's Dictionary (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957) and Tales of Soldiers & Civilians (1891) [also known as In the Midst of Life (New York: Heritage, 1943)].