Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American writer, poet, journalist, and satirist. Born in a log cabin in the Appalachian mountains, Bierce fought on the Union side during the Civil War before settling in San Francisco and beginning to write. In 1913 he travelled to Mexico to observe the Mexican Revolution, where he disappeared, never to be seen again. Today Bierce is regarded as one of the most influential writers of weird fiction in American literary history, with some of his stories, including "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," having inspired Robert Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft and sowed the seeds of the Cthulhu Mythos.
