Logos Multilingual Portal

Select Language



MENCKEN Henry Louis  (1880-1956)

American journalist, critic, and essayist, whose perceptive and often controversial analyses of American life and letters made him one of the most influential critics of the 1920s and '30s. Mencken, born in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 12, 1880, began his career as a journalist with the Baltimore Morning Herald and in 1906 switched to the Baltimore Sun, where he remained in various editorial capacities for most of his life. With the American drama critic George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) he coedited The Smart Set, a satirical monthly magazine, from 1914 to 1923. Again with Nathan, in 1924, Mencken founded the American Mercury, the literary heir to their previous joint endeavor; Mencken remained as its editor until 1933. The shortcomings of democracy and middle-class American culture were the targets of Mencken's wit and criticism. A six-volume collection of his essays and reviews, entitled Prejudices, was published between 1919 and 1927. Mencken's most important piece of scholarship was The American Language (3 vol., 1936-48), which traced the development and established the importance of AMERICAN ENGLISH (q.v.) . Mencken died in Baltimore on Jan. 29, 1956. Happy Days (1940), Newspaper Days (1941), and Heathen Days (1943) are his autobiographies.

è kkoperò na pistèzzi ti \'nan àntrepo lèi t\'alìssio motte zzeri kalà ka isù \'so topo-tu iche pònta azzematarìe
i kusciènza ene i fonì apu \'c\'essu ssemà ka mas lèi ka kaizzàtto ma ssozzi torìsi
ja\' passo problèma complicào echi panta mia ssoluziùna sèmplici. Ca ene sbajàa
motte \'cùo to jèno ti zzàfi ta chèria i nnan àntrepo noò panta ja\' cino na ffitta \'zze kumpassiùna. Ja\' na kusi tes fischiàe en è nna kami addho ca na zzisi poddhì
o cinico ene \'nan àntrepo pu motte cui mira \'zze fiùru, kanoniète atturnu na torìsi pu stei to baùli
o filosofo ene \'na cceco ti pai vrìskonta i nna kkambarà skotinì mia mmùscia mavri ka è ttin echi. \'na teologo è nan àntrepo ka fitète na tin vrichi