became important for him after he started writing columns for the Argonaut and the News Letter, which he later became the editor of. In 1871, when he was twenty-nine years old, he married the daughter of a forty-niner, Mary Ellen Day. He then moved with his wife to London in 1872, where he had two sons. He worked for local newspapers where he adopted a type of journalistic style, which earned him the name “Bitter Bierce.” This time in London had little significance in his literary career (Fadiman XIII).In 1876 Bierce and family moved back to San Francisco after his health had failed. He then began working at the Argonaut again and also started writing for the Wasp and Sunday Examiner. It was during this time that he started writing stories. In the early nineteen hundreds, Bierce’s life was marked by tragedy and failure. In 1889, his oldest son was killed in a shooting brawl over a girl and in 1901 his youngest son died of alcoholism. In 1904 his wife of thirty-three years divorced him and left. This period of great misfortune led Bierce to an overwhelmingly dreary outlook on life (Fadiman XIII). In 1913 Bierce wrote his last letter to his daughter on December twenty-sixth, after which he was never heard from again. There are many possible theories as to what may have happened to him after he disappeared. Some of the more obscure hypotheses include his becoming a spy in Panama with a British agent or going to the Grand Canyon to commit suicide. The most popular belief is that he went to Mexico where he might have joined the Mexican Revolution under the leadership of Pancho Villa. No matter how he met his demise his death brought a certain peace to him which he had longed for all of his life (Swaim).In reference to his literary skills, Bierce has a distinct style, which can be seen clearly in his writing. In The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and A Watcher by the Dead, Bierce uses his ironic and somewhat ...
