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

CONTRIBUTE ?

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
  • 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 G University

    HERE



    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
  • The Last Stand
    of Ambrose Bierce

    Two-act play by Rob Foster


    Two-act play by Ed Scutt
  • For the Ahkoond
    Science-fiction by Ambrose Bierce
  • Bierce Journalism Artchives
    Archives of American
    Journalism site
  • Project Guttenberg}
    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


  • 11/20/24
    “Camels and Christians receive their burdens kneeling.” —Ambrose Bierce


    Bierce as adapted from the artist Sanjin Masic of Sarajevo.


    Read HERE

    RECENT FROM HIPPOCAMPUS PRESS
    Buy HERE
    Bierce heads to Mexico in 1913 where he investigates a mysterious group of Mexican warriors calling themselves the Jaguar-Knights. What they are planning is nothing less than the resurrection of the ancient Aztec gods, with potentially cataclysmic results.
    Jason C. Eckhardt is an artist, author, and critic. His collected short fiction was gathered in Lord of the Gallows (2022).


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

    Ambrose Bierce and his “Little Johnny”stories

    EVEN GREAT WRITERS MAKE MISTAKES
    HERE


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    EXCLUSIVES

    The Definitive Bierce Glossary of Religious Terms
    Only Bierce could put mysticism, theology, and the notion of some supernatural being in their proper place. Read about it HERE
  • Nuggets and Dust.
    Bierce's second book in 1871, a cheap paperback written under the name Dod Grile -- and his rarest book. Read about it HERE
  • The Parrot That (almost) Ruled the World.
    Absurdity by Don Swaim HERE
  • Did Bierce really say “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”? Short answer: no. HERE
  • The Pseudonyms of Ambrose Bierce
    From Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J. to J. Milton Sloluck to Jum Coople (not to mention Dod Grile) HERE
  • The Many Deaths of Ambrose Bierce
    Forrest Gander writes of the innumerable theories about Bierce's mysterious disappearance. HERE
  • Ambrose Bierce and the David Lang Hoax
    In 1880, an Alabama farmer mysteriously disappears. Is Bierce's famous story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" based on the tale of the vanishing farmer? HERE
  • "Collecting Ambroses"
    Unintended whimsy by CHARLES FORT: HERE
  • The Oxoxoco Bottle
    Author Gerald Kersh came up with a yarn for The Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s about Bierce being fattened up by cannibals in Mexico. HERE [scroll down the page to read] .
  • Who Was Donn Piatt and Why Did Bierce Care?
    The eleventh edition of Ambrose Bierce Collected Essays and Journalism includes a savage epitaph dedicated to Piatt (who was still alive). Read about Piatt HERE
  • Bierce and the Little Blue Books
    Cheap editions for the masses from a troubled publisher: HERE

    AMBROSE BIERCE

    1877. That new, hideous, unholy dance craze known as the waltz was everywhere -- according to a best-seller attributed to a "William Herman." But rumors abounded that the book was a hoax, perpetrated by Ambrose Bierce, as explored by David Balfour. HERE

    HOW THIS FAMOUS QUOTE HAPPENED

    Read HERE

    WHAT A FIND!
    You open an old desk that had been in your family for decades -- and inside: an original letter from Ambrose Bierce to his niece Lora. HERE

    THE SCHULTZ INTERVIEW

    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

    __________________

    BIERCE DISPUTES MARK TWAIN


    In his San Francisco Examiner column of Aug. 26, 1888, Bierce takes to task his acquaintance Mark Twain for erring about Bierce's biography: Read HERE

    EXCLUSIVE
    HOW AMBROSE BIERCE DISAPPEARED (MAYBE)
    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.

    continue reading CHAPTER ONE



    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 is in the Austin, Texas, Statesman HERE



    San Francisco Bulletin, March 24, 1920


    __________________



    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



  • 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


    __________________





    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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