Edgar Allan Poe/Ambrose Bierce

1. Edgar Allan Poe/Ambrose Bierce

2. Edgar Allan Poe • Early Life • Poe born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was a talented actress from an English theatrical family. Because Poe’s father, David Poe, Jr., a traveling actor of Irish descent, was neither talented nor responsible, the family suffered financially. After apparently separating from David Poe, Elizabeth died in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811. The young Edgar, though not legally adopted, was taken in by a wealthy Scottish tobacco exporter, John Allan, from whom Poe took his middle name.

3. His Work • Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

4. His work • "The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the use of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling and the tinkling" of the bells in part 1 to the "moaning and the groaning" of the bells in part 4.

5. The Tell Tale Heart • "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. (The victim was an old man with a blind "vulture eye", as the narrator calls it.) The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator's guilt manifests itself in an auditory hallucination: the narrator hears the man's heart still beating under the floorboards

6. HIS death • The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious: the circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed. On October 3, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.

7. A Dream • A Dream • In visions of the dark nightI have dreamed of joy departed-But a waking dream of life and lightHath left me broken-hearted.Ah! what is not a dream by dayTo him whose eyes are castOn things around him with a rayTurned back upon the past?That holy dream- that holy dream,While all the world were chiding,Hath cheered me as a lovely beamA lonely spirit guiding.What though that light, thro' storm and night,So trembled from afar-What could there be more purely brightIn Truth's day-star? • Edgar Allan Poe

8. Ambrose Bierce • What they call dying is merely the last pain. • He married Mary Ellen Day in 1871 • He and Mary had three children, two sons named Day and Leigh and a daughter Helen. • Day died in a bar fight and Leigh died of pneumonia related to alcoholism • Mary and Ambrose divorced in 1904 and Mary died a year later.

9. Mystery behind Mckinley’sassasination • Bierce wrote a poem following the assassination of Governor Goebel in 1900 he said to express the mood of dismay and fear • "The bullet that pierced Goebel's breast • Can not be found in all the West; • Good reason, it is speeding here • To stretch McKinley on his bier." • The poem seemed to foreshadow the crime and Hearst was accused by rival newspapers and Secretary of State Elihu Root of having called for McKinley’s assassination

10. His work • One of his most famous works is his “Devil’s Dictionary” which consists of satirical definitions of English words. • He had a very dark and cynical writing style • "Bierce was never a great writer. He has painful faults of vulgarity and cheapness of imagination. But...his style, for one thing, will preserve him; and the purity of his misanthropy, too, will help to keep him alive.“ – noted essayist Clifton Fadiman

11. An occurance at owl creek bridge • Bierce’s most famous short story • A soldier is enlisted by a disguised union soldier to demolish Owl Creek Bridge, He is caught in the act and is sentenced to die by hanging upon the bridge. • In the third part of the story the man escapes because the rope breaks and runs home, we find out however the third part of the story is a dream and he really is hung on the bridge.

12. Disappearance • In October 1913 Bierce departed Washington D.C. for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields • He crossed by way of El Paso into Mexico during it’s revolution • He joined Pancho Villa’s army and is know to have accompanied them as far as the city of Chihuahua • He wrote a letter to his friend Blanche Partington dated December 26, 1913 • He vanished without a trace becoming one of the most famous disappearance in American Literary History • All Investigations have turned up nothing and there are many theories about his fate

13. Quotes • "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination."-- The last line of the last letter from Ambrose Bierce, December 26, 1913 • "War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer. [From his grim experience, he became] truly capable of transferring the bloody, headless bodies and boar-eaten corpses of the battlefield onto paper.“ Richard O’Conner

14. A NIGHTMARE by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) DREAMED that I was dead. The years went by: The world remembered gratefully that I Had lived and written, although other names Once hailed with homage, had in turn to die. Out of my grave a giant beech upgrew. Its roots transpierced my body, through and through, My substance fed its growth. From many lands Men came in troops that noble tree to view. 'Twas sacred to my memory and fame-- But Julian Hawthorne's wittol daughter came And with untidy finger daubed upon Its bark a reeking record of her name.

15. Work Cites • Wikimedia foundation inc.