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Born: September 12, 1880 - Baltimore, Maryland
Died: January 29, 1956 - Baltimore, Maryland
| Excerpt from The American Language |
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 o other country can show such linguistic solidarity, nor any approach to it… There may be slight differences in pronunciation and intonation-a Southern softness, a Yankee drawl, a Western burr-but in the words they use and the way they use them all Americans, even the least tutored, follow the same line. One observes, of course, a polite speech and a common speech. But the common speech is everywhere the same, and its uniform vagaries take the place of the dialectic variations of other lands. A Boston street-car conductor could go to work in Chicago or San Francisco without running the slightest risk of misunderstanding his new fares. Once he had picked up half a dozen localisms, he would be, to all linguistic intents and purposes, fully naturalized."
Read the whole work
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Teaching Topics in Social Studies
H.L. Mencken wrote commentary on civil liberty violations that occurred after WORLD WAR ONE. He considered the SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL,
and THE RED SCARE to be violations of CIVIL LIBERTIES. He was a staunch "WET" and expressed his disdain for PROHIBITION in many articles. Although he was a popular columnist, and author of at least twenty-eight books, the popularity of his social and political critiques waned during THE GREAT DEPRESSION and FDR's NEW DEAL.
Teaching Topics in Language Arts
H.L. Mencken started his career as a city REPORTER for the Baltimore Herald. He was an AUTHOR of social and political COMMENTARY,
which he published in BOOKS and MAGAZINES. He later went on to EDIT a newspaper, but he always continued with his LITERARY CRITIQUE. He also enjoyed writing LETTERS to literary colleagues. Mencken is probably best known for American Language, which gives examples of
IDIOMS and American expressions.
| Facts About H.L. Mencken and The American Language |
- At age nineteen he camped outside the editors' offices at the Baltimore Herald hoping for a story assignment; after a month of waiting, he received his first assignment and his professional career began
- His first newspaper assignment was to cover a rural suburb of Baltimore
- He suffered a cerebral thrombosis in 1948; he was thereafter physically able to write; he died in 1956
- While he may be best known for American Language, his own favorite book was A
Treatise on the Gods, Mencken's critique of religion
- He called his experience reading Huckleberry Finn, "probably the most stupendous event of my whole life"
- He gave most of his books and papers to the Pratt Library in Baltimore
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