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H.L. Mencken

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Born: September 11 1880

Died: 2828 01 19561956

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language , a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

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H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken

Books from H.L. Mencken

The Anti-Christ

A Mencken Chrestomathy

The Vintage Mencken

The American Language

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

In Defense Of Women

Notes on Democracy

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial

Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America)

My Life As Author And Editor

Fante/Mencken: John Fante & H.L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence, 1930-1952

Contos Comédia Social

The American Credo: A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind

The Weird Crime MEGAPACK ®: 25 Weird Tales of Crime and Mystery!

H. L. Mencken Seven Book Collection: The American Credo; The American Language; The Philosophy Of Friedrich Nietzsche; A Book Of Burlesques; A Book Of ... Calumny (Alpha Centauri Philosophy 14451)

Men Versus the Man

Os Americanos

Do You Remember?: The Whimsical Letters of H. L. Mencken and Philip Goodman

Living Philosophies

A House of Pomegranates/The Story of the Nightingale & the Rose