Mencken, H L

Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)

H.L. Mencken.

(credit: Courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore; photograph, Robert Kniesche)

(born Sept. 12, 1880, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—died Jan. 29, 1956, Baltimore) U.S. controversialist, humorous journalist, and critic. Mencken worked on the staff of the Baltimore Sun for much of his life. With George Jean Nathan (1882–1958), he coedited The Smart Set (1914–23) and cofounded and edited (1924–33) the American Mercury, both important literary magazines. Probably the most influential U.S. literary critic in the 1920s, he often used criticism to jeer at the nation's social and cultural weaknesses. Prejudices (1919–27) collects many of his reviews and essays. In The American Language (1919; supplements 1945, 1948) he brought together American expressions and idioms; by the time of his death he was perhaps the leading authority on the language of the U.S.