Ambrose Bierce was born, the tenth of thirteen children, on June 24, 1842, in the rural settlement of Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, whence four years later the family moved further west to the adjoining state of Indiana. His father was a farmer with no gift for agriculture but with a love of literature, so that though the living was hard and mean, and the household culture, under the stern religious discipline of a dominant mother, backwoods Calvinist, it was also thoroughly literate, even bookish. On leaving school at the age of fifteen Bierce went first to work as a printer's apprentice on an antislavery newspaper and then in 1859, encouraged by his uncle, the self-styled General Lucius Bierce, he enrolled at Kentucky Military Institute …
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Citation: Butterfield, Herbie. "Ambrose Bierce". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=409, accessed 22 November 2024.]
