Ambrose Bierce's Civil War: Annotated Warbler Classics Edition

by Ambrose Bierce, William McCann (Introduction)

Overview

Journalist, short story writer, a poet, and critic Ambrose Bierce has been called one of America’s greatest wits and an uncompromising satirist. He wrote unsparingly and with haunting realism of his Civil War experiences. His finest and most famous Civil War writings are gathered in this volume of six essays and twenty stories, including “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “What I Saw of Shiloh,” and “A Horseman in the Sky.” Edited and introduced by William McCann, this annotated Warbler Classics edition also includes a detailed biographical timeline of Bierce’s personal and professional life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781734029246
Publisher:	Warbler Press Inc.
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1913?) was one of the leading men of letters in nineteenth-century America and a Civil War veteran. He served as a first lieutenant in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment. After the war he became a regular columnist at The San Francisco Examiner and one of the most influential journalists on the West Coast. In addition to his journalistic work, he wrote piercingly about the ghastly things he had seen in the war and was a pioneer of the psychological horror story. At the age of seventy-one Bierce disappeared while joining Pancho Villa's army as an observer of the Mexican Revolution, and, in spite of multiple investigations, his ultimate fate remains unknown.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

War Memoirs

On a Mountain 1

What I Saw of Shiloh 6

A Little of Chickamauga 23

The Crime at Pickett’s Mill 28

Four Days in Dixie 37

What Occurred at Franklin 46

A Bivouac of the Dead 53

War Stories

A Horseman in the Sky 55

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 62

Chickamauga 72

A Son of the Gods 79

One of the Missing 86

Killed at Resaca 98

The Affair at Coulter’s Notch 105

The Coup de Grace 114

Parker Adderson, Philosopher 120

An Affair of Outposts 127

The Story of a Conscience 137

One Kind of Office 144

One Officer, One Man 154

George Thurston 160

The Mocking Bird 165

Three and One Are One 171

A Baffled Ambuscade 174

Two Military Executions 177

A Resumed Identity 180

Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General 186

Biographical Timeline 195

Editorial Reviews

“The most important American writer who served as a combat soldier in the Civil War” ―Booklist

“Bierce is a master of apprehension, always alert to threat. It’s as if every charged moment of his military service were still etched in his memory, persisting as only the most disturbing sensations can.” —Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“The Civil War stories…are admired for more than just their documentary value: ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ with its death’s head japes and narrative somersaults, is considered by critics to be one of the finest ‘experimental’ American stories of the period.” —Bill Marx, Columbia Journalism Review

From the Publisher