Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio, United States in 1842. He was the tenth of thirteen children, and left home aged fifteen to become a 'printer's devil' (a printing apprentice) at a small Ohio newspaper. Bierce fought in the American Civil War, working as a topographical engineer and even reaching the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army to settle in San Francisco. During the 1870s and 1880s, he worked on a variety of newspapers, even spending three years in England, and famously helped quash a bill which would have put the cost of the First Transcontinental Railroad on the American people instead of the railroad companies.

Through his newspaper output – including one of the first regular columns in William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner – Bierce developed a famous reputation for searing criticism and acerbic wit, even earning the nickname 'Bitter Bierce'. His satirical reference book, The Devil's Dictionary, which lampooned cant and political doublespeak – “Corporation (n.) An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility”– remains widely read today. However, Bierce is critically best remembered for his fiction. Indeed, many of his short stories – such as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Boarded Window, Killed at Resaca and Chickamauga, all of which are penned in 'Pure English' – are held among the best of the 19th century. Bierce's writings are also generally regarded as some of the best war writings of all time.

Bierce's death was a mysterious one, which continues to intrigue people to this day: In October 1913, aged 71, Bierce left Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. He got as far as the Mexican city of Chihuahua, where he wrote a letter to a close friend, dated 26^th December, 1913, in which he said “I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination." After this he vanished, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history.