H. L. Mencken essay and review typescript drafts

Henry Louis Mencken was an American satirist, essayist, journalist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He was born in 1880 in Baltimore, son of a cigar factory owner. Mencken attended Professor Knapp's School and graduated as valedictorian from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1896. He would go on to take a class in writing from Cosmopolitan University, one of the nation's first correspondence schools. in 1899, he was hired as a part-time journalist by the Morning Herald Newspaper in Baltimore. Mencken later moved to the Baltimore Sun, to which he continued to contribute until 1948. In 1908, Menken became a literary critic for the magazine, The Smart Set, and founded The American Mercury, which later developed a national circulation, with George Jean Nathan. It was during this period that he wrote the essays and opinion pieces that would make him famous. A skeptic of the New Deal and a fierce critic of FDR as well as of American involvement in World War II, he scaled back his writing for the Sun for several years during the 1930s, instead focusing on his memoirs and other projects as editor. H. L. Mencken suffered a stroke in 1948 and never fully recovered. He lost his ability to read, write, and speak. He died in 1956.