Includes: 104 volumes written, edited or Mencken as chief contributor, including most of his chief titles (many 1st Eds.), with: Americana series, Treatise on the Gods, The Philosophy of Nietzsche, A Book of Prefaces, Prejudices (series 1-3, 6), In Defense of Women, A Book of Burlesques, Notes on Democracy, Christmas Story, Happy Days, Newspaper Days, Heathen Days, The American Language series (including supplements), A New Dictionary of Quotations, James Branch Cabell, Ventures Into Verse, The Artist, The Gist of Nietzsche, Europe After 8:15, The Bathtub Hoax, Treatise on Right and Wrong and many others (several titles are duplicates but different issues or printings); 29 volumes with introductions, prefaces or anthology contributions by Mencken, such as: Gulliver’s Travels, An American Tragedy, J.F. Cooper's The American Democrat, Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ, Ibsen's A Doll's House, Lippmann's Men of Destiny, Modern Writers at Work, The Saturday Review Gallery, The Red Network by Dilling, etc.; 72 volumes of biographies, critical studies, bibliographies, or other writings relating to or including Mencken, with: Alfred A. Knopf: Quarter Century (privately printed, scarce with slipcase), The Diary of..., The Letters of..., The Ombibulous Mr. Mencken, Interviewing Sinners and Saints, 2 copies: Fante/Mecken (Black Sparrow, hardcover & paper), The Last of the Provincial, The Editor...Bluenose...the Prostitute, Dreiser-Mencken Letters, The Sun Papers of Baltimore, Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography by Schrader, Mencken's Last Campaign, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, Serpent in Eden, Disturber of the Peace, Minority Report (several copies), From Confucious to Mencken, etc.; and 23 miscellaneous Menckeniana volumes and items, including various pamphlets, two copies of Colophon No. One (1930, and one with original glassine), a spoken word LP record (Mencken conversing with Donald Howe Kirkley, Sr. of The Baltimore Sun, Caedmon, 1957), a recorded cassette tape (NBC Biographies in Sound, 1956), The Smart Set: A History and Anthology, 2 copies of By the Neck by August Mencken (1 inscribed), The Atlantic Monthly, bound Vol. No. 46, 1880, and other paper items. Together, approximately 230 volumes. From 16mo to 4to. Mostly cloth-bound (about of which have jackets), and several wrapper-bound. Mixture of First Editions, early printings, and reprints. A complete list is available upon request.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) the prolific twentieth century journalist, editor, author and social critic, who was an intelligent cynic and freethinker, also known as the "Sage of Baltimore." He is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century. He started out as a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald and later moved to the Baltimore Sun in 1906. He also began writing as a literary critic for the magazine The Smart Set. He founded his own influential magazine, The American Mercury in January, 1924. As an editor and a "man of ideas," Mencken became close friends with the literary giants of his time, including Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Alfred Knopf. Mencken was an outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights, and as a nationally syndicated columnist and popular author, he played an important role in ending America's preoccupation with fundamentalist Christianity, and opened the way for a secularist revival - from Wikipedia Encyclopedia.