Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

September 12th, 2002

American writer H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (The American Language, 1919-48) is born in Baltimore in 1880.

H.L. Mencken, b. September 12, 1880, d. 1956

Perhaps no other writer has influenced the tone and style of American prose more than the Sage of Baltimore, the incomparable stylist and thinker who ruled literary America for twenty or thirty years early in the twentieth century. Decades later, his writing remains a model of vigorous, memorable, and original expression.

Suggested Reading Essays & studies George Bernard Shaw—His Plays, 1905. The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1908. A Book of Prefaces, 1917. In Defense of Women, 1918. Prejudices (in six series), 1919-1927. Notes on Democracy, 1926. Treatise on the Gods, 1930. Treatise on Right and Wrong, 1934. Generally Political, 1944. A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949. Philology The American Language, 1919. Supplements, 1945-1950. Autobiography Happy Days, 1940. Newspaper Days, 1941. Heathen Days, 1943. Diary The Diary of H.L. Mencken, 1989.

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