Mencken, H. L.

Mencken, H. L.(Henry Louis Mencken)mĕng´kən, mĕn´– [key], 1880–1956, American editor, author, and critic, b. Baltimore, studied at the Baltimore Polytechnic. Probably America's most influential journalist, he began his career on the BaltimoreMorning Heraldat the age of 18, became editor of the BaltimoreEvening Herald,从1906年直到他死亡的员工the BaltimoreSunorEvening Sun.He also played a key role in the production of two extremely influential national magazines. From 1914 to 1923 he was coeditor of theSmart Setwith George JeanNathan; together they founded theAmerican Mercuryin 1924, and Mencken was its sole editor from 1925 to 1933.

Mencken's pungent, iconoclastic criticism and scathing invective, although aimed at all smugly complacent attitudes, was chiefly directed at what he saw as the ignorant, self-righteous, and overly credulous American middle class, members of which he dubbedBoobus americanus.His essays were collected in a series of six volumes,Prejudices(1919–27; repr. in 2 vol., 2010). In the field of philology he compiled a monumental and lively study,The American Language(1st ed. 1919; 4th ed. 1936; with supplements, 1946, 1948). Among his other works areGeorge Bernard Shaw: His Plays(1905),In Defense of Women(1917),Treatise of the Gods(1930), and the autobiographical trilogyHappy Days, 1880–1892(1940),报纸的日子里,1899 - 1906(1941), andHeathen Days, 1890–1936(1943), collected in one volume in 1947. Mencken also fought against the strain of Puritanism in American literature and was an important literary champion of such writers as TheodoreDreiser, SherwoodAnderson, SinclairLewis, and EugeneO'Neill. His keen interest in and intelligent appraisal of 20th-century American letters are evident in the essays collected inH. L. Mencken on American Literature(2002).

Bibliography

See his letters (ed. by G. L. Forgue, 1961) and diary (ed. by C. A. Fecher, 1990); biographies by W. Manchester (1950), C. Angoff (1956), S. Mayfield (1968), C. Bode (1969), F. C. Hobson, Jr. (1994), and T. Teachout (2002); studies by D. C. Stenerson (1971), F. C. Hobson, Jr. (1974), C. Scruggs (1984), and E. A. Martin (1984); A. Bulsterbaum,H. L. Mencken: A Research Guide(1988).

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