H. L. Mencken on American Literature

By: H. L. Mencken, S. T. Joshi (Editor)

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Hardcover | 13 October 2002

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H. L. Mencken was one of the leading literary, social, and cultural critics of the 1910s, '20s, and '30s. However, very few of his literary reviews have been reprinted in any form prior to their appearance in this volume.

H. L. Mencken on American Literature presents a comprehensive selection of Mencken's reviews of the leading American writers of his time. Manifestly interested in establishing a canon of American literature, he took great pains to vaunt writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and James Branch Cabell as the most accomplished authors of the day.

At the same time, he found deficiencies in the work of such highly regarded figures as Edith Wharton, W. D. Howells, and Ambrose Bierce, placing them only in the second rank of American writers. Mencken also considered it his function to demolish the popular work of now-forgotten best-selling writers, demonstrating in his inimitably scathing manner the degree to which their catering to a mass audience rendered their work hollow and subliterary.

Mencken's reviews are a vast and untapped source for his provocative analyses of the best and the worst in American literature. They are presented here in a scrupulously edited and annotated edition.

Industry Reviews

"By sorting through the more than 900,000 words of Mencken's Smart Set criticism, and significant other writings as well, S. T. Joshi is more conversant with Mencken's literary criticism than anyone studying HLM today." - Ray Stevens, president, The Mencken Society

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Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies Literary Studies from 1900 to Current

Introduction	p. vii
A Note on This Edition	p. xix
The Travails of a Book Reviewer	p. 1
Eight Years of Reviewing	p. 1
Books I Have Not Read	p. 7
On Reviewing	p. 8
Fifteen Years of Book Reviewing	p. 11
Establishing the Canon	p. 22
Mark Twain	p. 22
Edgar Allan Poe	p. 33
Ralph Waldo Emerson	p. 35
Henry James	p. 37
Theodore Dreiser	p. 39
Willa Cather	p. 73
Sherwood Anderson	p. 83
James Branch Cabell	p. 95
F. Scott Fitzgerald	p. 109
Sinclair Lewis	p. 115
John Dos Passos	p. 136
Ernest Hemingway	p. 139
Some Worthy Second-Raters	p. 143
Ambrose Bierce	p. 143
Edith Wharton	p. 147
William Dean Howells	p. 150
Jack London	p. 157
Abraham Cahan	p. 159
Ring Lardner	p. 162
Ellen Glasgow	p. 169
Trade Goods	p. 175
O. Henry	p. 175
Will Levington Comfort	p. 176
Marjorie Benton Cooke	p. 180
Winston Churchill	p. 183
Mary MacLane	p. 190
E. M. Hull	p. 194
Gertrude Atherton	p. 198
Thomas Dixon, Jr.	p. 204
Some Thoughts on Literary Criticism	p. 209
Percival Pollard	p. 212
Leon Kellner	p. 214
Wilson and Helen Follett	p. 219
Paul Elmer More	p. 222
Stuart P. Sherman	p. 225
T. S. Eliot	p. 227
Margaret Anderson	p. 229
Notes	p. 235
Glossary of Names	p. 245
Index	p. 277
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

H. L. Mencken on American Literature

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