Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842–1913) is an American classic who is considered a precursor of the "dark literature" of the 20th century. Known primarily as a masterful author of the short prose form, Bierce was highly valued by his contemporaries and won the respect of his successors, to some extent influencing the further development of English-language whimsical and Gothic literature. Ambrose Bierce, with characteristic sharpness and harshness, writes extensively about his experience of participation in the Civil War, in which he fought on the side of the North, which formed the basis of one of his most famous collections, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. No less famous Bierce's collection is Can Such Things Be?, where he creates a literary canon of "terrible" and "supernatural".
Bierce's life is difficult to call happy: divorce from his wife and her death, the death of the eldest son in a duel, the death of the younger one from an illness aggravated by alcoholism - obviously, all this gave Bierce's works a special tragic and mystical color. The mysterious disappearance of the writer and his probable death in 1913 - at the beginning of 1914 still serve as a topic for various interpretations, which were reflected in the works of such famous writers as G. F. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep, R. Heinlein's Lost Legacy, Robert Bloch's I Like Blondes and others. Ambrose Bierce's burial place is still unknown.
We offer to your attention the works that were once published in the three most famous collections of Ambrose Bierce, an American classic and the creator of dark Gothic literature - Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, In the Midst of Life, Can Such Things Be?.
