Henry Louis Mencken
(1880–1956)

American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore"; regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century

Henry Louis Mencken

Works edit

Editor edit

Books edit

  • George Bernard Shaw: His Plays (1905) (start transcription) external source
  • The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1907) (start transcription) external source
  • The Gist of Nietzsche (1910) external source
  • What You Ought to Know about your Baby (Ghostwriter for Leonard K. Hirshberg) (1910) external source
  • Men versus the Man: a Correspondence between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist and H. L. Mencken, Individualist (1910) (start transcription) external source
  • Europe After 8:15 (1914)
  • A Book of Burlesques (1916) (transcription project)
  • A Little Book in C Major (1916) (start transcription) external source
  • A Book of Prefaces (1917) (start transcription) external source
  • In Defense of Women (1917) (start transcription) external source
  • Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918) (start transcription) external source
  • The American Language (1919) (First edition, Second Edition, Third edition) external source
  • Prejudices (1919–27)
    • Prejudices: First Series (1919) (start transcription) external source
    • Prejudices: Second Series (1920) (start transcription) external source
    • Prejudices: Third Series (1922)
    • Fourth Series (1924)
    • Fifth Series (1926)
    • Sixth Series (1927, still under copyright)
    • Selected Prejudices (1927)
  • Heliogabalus (A Buffoonery in Three Acts) (with George Jean Nathan) (1920)
  • The American Credo (1920) (start transcription) external source
  • The Borzoi 1920: being a sort of record of five years' publishing external source
  • Notes on Democracy (1926)
  • Menckeneana: A Schimpflexikon (1928) – Editor
  • Treatise on the Gods (1930)
  • Making a President (1932)
  • Treatise on Right and Wrong (1934)
  • Happy Days, 1880–1892 (1940)
  • Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941)
  • A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1942)
  • Heathen Days, 1890–1936 (1943)
  • Christmas Story (1944)
  • The American Language, Supplement I (1945)
  • The American Language, Supplement II (1948)
  • A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Posthumous collections

  • Minority Report (1956)
  • On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1956)
  • Cairns, Huntington, ed. (1965), The American Scene. .
  • The Bathtub Hoax and Blasts & Bravos from the Chicago Tribune (1958)
  • Lippman, Theo jr, ed. (1975), A Gang of Pecksniffs: And Other Comments on Newspaper Publishers, Editors and Reporters. .
  • Rodgers, Marion Elizabeth, ed. (1991), The Impossible HL Mencken: A Selection of His Best Newspaper Stories. .
  • Yardley, Jonathan, ed. (1992), My Life As Author and Editor. .
  • A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (1994)
  • Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work (1996)
  • A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, Melville House Publishing, 2006. .

Chapbooks, pamphlets, and notable essays edit

Columns edit

  • "Gamalielese" Baltimore Evening Sun, March 7, 1921
  • "A Short View of Gamalielese" The Nation, April 27, 1921 (external scan)
  • "Gamalielese Again" New York Times, September 9, 1921
  • "The American Language", in The Bookman (9 June, 1921), book review of Gilbert M. Tucker's American English (external scan)

Translations edit

Works about Mencken edit


Some or all works by this author are in the public domain in the United States because they were published before January 1, 1929.


This author died in 1956, so works by this author are in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. These works may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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