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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.

advokat - den som skyddar oss mot rånare genom att ta ifrån oss lockelsen
demokrati är en patetisk tro på att kollektiv visdom uppstår genom individuell okunskap
det är svårt att tro att en människa talar sanning om du vet att du själv skulle ljuga i hans ställe
en cyniker är en man som, när han känner blomdoft, ser sig omkring efter en likkista
när jag hör en man ta emot folkets applåder tycker jag alltid synd om honom. För att bli utvisslad behöver han bara leva länge nog
samvetet är vår inre röst som varnar oss att någon kan titta
varje svårt problem har en enkel lösning - som inte är den rätta