H. L. Mencken: Prejudices Vol. 1 (LOA #206): First, Second, and Third Series [Hardcover]

H. L. Mencken was unquestionably the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. The six volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a slashing attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of as harbingers of a new frankness and maturity. Laced with savage humor and delighting in verbal play, Mencken’s prose remains a one-of-a-kind roller-coaster ride through a staggering range of themes: literature and journalism, politics and religion, sex and marriage, food and drink.

In this and a companion volume, The Library of America presents all six series of Prejudices in their original form. The first three series include some of his most famous writing, including “The Sahara of the Bozart,” an attack on Southern culture so unbridled as to earn him widespread criticism from politicians and the press; “The National Letters,” a lively and free-spoken survey of writing in America; “The Dry Millennium,” an analysis of the multiple absurdities of Prohibition; “Exeunt Omnes,” an unblinking and deromanticized contemplation of death; and “On Being an American,” a humorous celebration of the political and cultural panorama that he saw as “incomparably the greatest show on earth.” Here are his harsh summing-up of Theodore Roosevelt’s career (“he didn’t believe in democracy; he believed simply in government”) and his sympathetic portraits of literary friends like James Huneker and George Jean Nathan. Mencken’s account of the original reception of Prejudices, from his memoir My Life as Editor and Author, is included as an appendix.

Edmund Wilson wrote: “Mencken’s mind . . . has all the courage in the world in a country where courage is rare.&rdqlÑ