H.L. Mencken
H.L. Mencken
H.L. Mencken is a noted contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica online. Read Britannica's biography of H.L. Mencken
BIOGRAPHY

American journalist and critic. Contributor to the 13th edition (1926) of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

photograph: courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore; photograph, Robert Kniesche

Primary Contributions (1)
H.L. Mencken
The reputation of the journalist and critic H.L. Mencken has seen its ups and downs since his death in 1956. His importance as an early and influential student of the variety of the English language peculiar to America is not seriously questioned, however. His book The American Language was…
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Publications (3)
H. L. Mencken: The Days Trilogy, Expanded Edition (LOA #257): Happy Days / Newspaper Days / Heathen Days / Days Revisited: Unpublished Commentary (Library of America H. L. Mencken Edition)
H. L. Mencken: The Days Trilogy, Expanded Edition (LOA #257): Happy Days / Newspaper Days / Heathen Days / Days Revisited: Unpublished Commentary (Library of America H. L. Mencken Edition) (September 2014)
By H. L. Mencken
A major literary event: Mencken’s dazzling autobiography, with 200 pages of his own never-before-published commentary and photos. In 1936, at the age of fifty-five, H. L. Mencken published a reminiscence about his boyhood in The New Yorker, beginning a long and magnificent adventure in autobiography by America’s greatest journalist. Mencken went on to gather his childhood recollections in Happy Days (1940), a richly detailed, poignant account of growing up in Baltimore. A critical and popular success,...
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H. L. Mencken: Prejudices Vol. 1 (LOA #206): First, Second, and Third Series (Library of America H. L. Mencken Edition)
H. L. Mencken: Prejudices Vol. 1 (LOA #206): First, Second, and Third Series (Library of America H. L. Mencken Edition) (September 2010)
By H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken was unquestionably the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. The six volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a slashing attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of as harbingers of a new frankness and maturity. Laced with savage humor and delighting in verbal play, Mencken’s prose remains a one-of-a-kind roller-coaster...
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The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th Edition
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th Edition (1984)
By H.L. Mencken
A modified, one-volume edition of Mencken's classic analysis of American English