H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)
Autor(a) de The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States
About the Author
H. L. Mencken 1880-1956 H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12, 1880. He considered Maryland to be his home despite his many years in New York. As a child he attended Professor Friedrich Knapp's Institute, a private school for children of German descent. He mostrar mais completed his secondary education at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated at the age of 16. Mencken wanted to be a writer but was obligated to work in his father's cigar factory. When his father died suddenly in 1899, Mencken immediately sought a job at the Baltimore Herald. Through he began with no experience in journalism, he quickly learned every job at the newspaper and at age 25 became its editor. Mencken went on to build himself a reputation as one of America's most brilliant writers and literary critics. His basic approach was to question everything and to accept no limits on personal freedom. He attacked organized religion, American cultural and literary standards, and every aspect of American life that he found shallow, ignorant, or false - which was almost everything. From the 1920's until his death, Mencken's sharp wit and penetrating social commentary made him one of the most highly regarded - and fiercely hated - of American social critics. He was later memorialized in the dramatic portrait of the cynical journalist in the play and film Inherit the Wind. Shortly after World War I, Mencken began a project that was to fascinate him for the rest of his life: a study of American language and how it had evolved from British English. In 1919 he published The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States. To this and his publisher's surprise, the book sold out quickly; its wit and nonscholarly approach attracted many readers who would not normally buy a book on such a subject. In 1936, a revised and enlarged edition was published, and in 1945 and 1948, supplements were added. The work shows not only how American English differs from British English but how the 300 year American experience shaped American dialect. Thus the book, still considered a classic in its field, is both a linguistic and social history of the United States. Mencken died in his sleep on January 29, 1956. He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Park Cemetery. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Séries
Obras de H. L. Mencken
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (1936) 710 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, Supplement II (1948) 219 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, Supplement I (1945) 171 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States {abridged} (1963) 148 cópias
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1942) 117 cópias
Prejudices: The First, Second, and Third Series + Prejudices: The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Series (2010) — Autor — 88 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States; Supplement I; Supplement II (1919) 66 cópias
Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: A Memoir by H. L. Mencken (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) (1994) 31 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, Supplements I & II (1945) 24 cópias
A gang of pecksniffs: And other comments on newspaper publishers, editors and reporters (1975) 23 cópias
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States {Second Edition} (1921) 16 cópias
The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States {First Edition} (1919) 13 cópias
The Antichrist 12 cópias
H. L. Mencken Seven Book Collection: The American Credo; The American Language; The Philosophy Of Friedrich Nietzsche;… (2017) 10 cópias
Men Versus the Man: A Correspondence Between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H. L. Mencken, Individualist (1910) — Co-author — 10 cópias
Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken 1907-1945 (1986) 9 cópias
DREISER - MENCKEN LETTERS. The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H. L. Mencken 1907 - 1945. Volume One. (2016) 7 cópias
Notes on Democracy 6 cópias
The mating game and how to play it: Tips and pointers from the collected wisdom of H. L. Mencken (over fifty years a… (1974) 5 cópias
Selected Prejuduces Second Series 3 cópias
Ausgewählte Schriften: Ausgewählte Werke, 3 Bde., Bd.2, Autobiographisches 1930-1948 (2000) 3 cópias
Ship Ahoy — Contribuinte — 3 cópias
Eleven Plays of Henrik Ibsen 3 cópias
The Works of H. L. Mencken 2 cópias
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 4: 1916-1917: Edited and annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 2 cópias
Russian Ballet Technique: As Taught by Alexis Kosloff of the Imperial Russian Ballet School, Moscow (Classic Reprint) (2016) 2 cópias
The rewards of virtue 2 cópias
SUPPLEMENT TWO, THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE 1 exemplar(es)
H L MENCKEN / American Language An Inquiry Into the Development 1960 [Hardcover] MENCKEN, H.L 1 exemplar(es)
American Credo: a Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind, improved 8/19/2010 1 exemplar(es)
Prontuario de la estupidez y los prejuicios humanos 1 exemplar(es)
H. L. Mencken's Smart set criticism 1 exemplar(es)
Rare H L Mencken / Supplement One The American Language An Inquiry Into 1962 - New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962 1 exemplar(es)
The Collected Works of H. L. Mencken: The American Language, The American Credo, The Philosophy Of Friedrich Nietzsche 1 exemplar(es)
Fordomme. Udvalg og oversættelse ved Hartvig Andersen. (Hasselbalchs Kulturbibliotek Bd. XXX) 1 exemplar(es)
H.L. MENCKEN PREJUDICES 1 exemplar(es)
Ventures Into Verse 1 exemplar(es)
The American Language by H.L. Mencken by H.L. Mencken by H.L. Mencken by H.L. Mencken 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury January 1924 1 exemplar(es)
Making a President A Footnote to the Saga of Democracy 1 exemplar(es)
Heliogabalus a buffoonery in three acts 1 exemplar(es)
A BOOK OF PREFACES By H. L. Mencken: JOSEPH CONRAD / THEODORE DREISER / JAMES HUNEKER / PURITANISM AS A LITERARY FORCE 1 exemplar(es)
The Window of Horrors (in Great Tales of Terror, JOSHI) 1 exemplar(es)
The triumph of the have-not 1 exemplar(es)
A Book of burlesques 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury. October 1926. v. IX, No. 34 — Editor — 1 exemplar(es)
The young Mencken : the best of his work 1 exemplar(es)
Supplement 1 exemplar(es)
H. L. Mencken on Politics 1 exemplar(es)
The Scopes Trial (in Law as Lit) 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury: Volume 26, Number 104: August 1932 (including John Fante "Altar Boy") 1 exemplar(es)
American Mercury Magazine, Vol.4, Jan.-April 1925 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury: Volume 26, Number 107: November 1932 (Including John Fante "Home Sweet Home" 1 exemplar(es)
James Branch Cabell; three essays 1 exemplar(es)
Menckeniana A Schimpflexicon 1 exemplar(es)
Letter: from H. L. Mencken to Miss [Martha] Barnett 1 exemplar(es)
A Girl From Red Lion, P.A. 1 exemplar(es)
The Sensibility of Woman 1 exemplar(es)
Selected Prejudices. First Series. The Travellers" Library 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury, Volume XXII No 85, January 1931 — Editor — 1 exemplar(es)
Homo Neanderthalensis 1 exemplar(es)
How to Drink Like a Gentleman, And Other Thoughts on the Art of Imbibing (Liberty Archives Digital Collection) 1 exemplar(es)
Mr. Cabell of Virginia 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury, Volume IX, Number 33, September 1926 1 exemplar(es)
American Mercury, August 1930 1 exemplar(es)
American Mercury, July 1931 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury Vol. XXIII No. 89. May 1931. 1 exemplar(es)
Where is the Graveyard of Dead Gods? 1 exemplar(es)
Memorable Quotations: H.L. Mencken 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 3: 1914-1915: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 1 exemplar(es)
The American language. Suppl.2 1 exemplar(es)
H. L. Mencken Seven Book Collection: The American Credo; The American Language; The Philosophy Of Friedrich Nietzsche;… 1 exemplar(es)
The Smart Set December 1919 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 8: 1922-1923: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2019) 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 7: 1921-1922: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2019) 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 6: 1920-1921: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 5: 1918-1919: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 2: 1912-1913: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 1 exemplar(es)
H. L. Mencken 5 volume set: Treatise on the Gods, The Impossible H. L. Mencken (selection of best newspaper stories),… 1 exemplar(es)
Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 1: 1908-1911: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi (Collected Essays and Journalism of… (2018) 1 exemplar(es)
Ventures Into Verse: Being Various Ballads, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, Songs, Quatrains, Odes and Roundels (Classic… (2017) 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury, Vol. II, No. 6 1 exemplar(es)
The American Mercury, Vol. XII, No. 46 1 exemplar(es)
The American Language Reference Library -The American Language, Fourth Edition, The American Language Supplement One,… (1960) 1 exemplar(es)
American Mercury, Vol. XIII No. 49, January 1928 1 exemplar(es)
The Intellectual Squirrel-Cage 1 exemplar(es)
Associated Works
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (2000) — Contribuinte, algumas edições — 552 cópias
The Master Builder / The Wild Duck / Peer Gynt / Hedda Gabler / Pillars of Society / A Doll's House / The League of… (1934) — Introdução — 266 cópias
The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion (2011) — Contribuinte — 246 cópias
The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (2008) — Contribuinte — 154 cópias
An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine (2000) — Contribuinte — 133 cópias
The Baseball Reader: Favorites from the Fireside Book of Baseball (1980) — Contribuinte — 103 cópias
The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (2020) — Contribuinte — 83 cópias
The world of law; a treasury of great writing about and in the law, short stories, plays, essays, accounts, letters,… (1960) — Contribuinte — 54 cópias
Published and Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, and Remembrances of American Writers (2002) — Contribuinte — 37 cópias
Wings, Vol. 6, No. 2, February 1932 — Contribuinte — 1 exemplar(es)
The Reviewer, Volume II, Numbers 1-6 (October 1921-March 1922) — Contribuinte — 1 exemplar(es)
The Reviewer, Volume III, Numbers 1-12 (April 1922-July 1923) — Contribuinte — 1 exemplar(es)
The Yale Review: A National Quarterly (July 1920) — Contribuinte — 1 exemplar(es)
Essays by James Huneker — Editor — 1 exemplar(es)
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome padrão
- Mencken, H. L.
- Outros nomes
- Drayham, William (pseudonym)
Hatteras, Owen (shared pseudonym)
Mencken, Henry Louis (birth name) - Data de nascimento
- 1880-09-12
- Data de falecimento
- 1956-01-29
- Local de enterro
- London Park Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Local de nascimento
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Local de falecimento
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Locais de residência
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Educação
- Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
Cosmopolitan University - Ocupação
- journalist
editor - Relacionamentos
- Mencken, August, Jr. (brother)
Dreiser, Theodore (friend)
Joyce, James (friend)
Haardt, Sara (wife) - Organizações
- Baltimore Morning Herald
Baltimore Sun
The Smart Set
The American Mercury
Membros
Resenhas
Listas
Catalog (1)
Art of Reading (1)
Prêmios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 191
- Also by
- 48
- Membros
- 6,911
- Popularidade
- #3,537
- Avaliação
- 4.0
- Resenhas
- 80
- ISBNs
- 348
- Idiomas
- 7
- Favorito
- 52
If you are of a sensitive nature, you might be offended by Mencken’s well-known bigotry, but he does not display it openly here. It is just occasionally slightly exposed. You might not even notice it unless you are an American of non-English ancestry.
Of some interest were:
Mencken explains the difference between the meaning of the expression to jew someone in the US and England on p. 124 (Who knew?).
There is a list of Americanisms that derive from commercial products. Some are surprising and some that anyone would have known in 1936 have disappeared, e.g. uneeda.
There is a list of common short words that were selected and used by newspaper editors for their headlines that sometimes popularized the word, e.g.
Ace. In the sense of expert or champion it came in during the World War. It has since been extended to mean any person who shows any ponderable proficiency in whatever he undertakes to do…
Blast. It has quite displaced explosion in headlines…
Car. It is rapidly displacing all the older synonyms for automobile, including even auto….
He discusses the creation of American verbs in various ways, e.g. to phone … to tiptoe (for to walk tiptoe) … to reminisce … to orate … to author, and others using -ize and a proper name which are now almost lost to us, e.g. to hooverize (introduced in 1917 and included in Webster’s New International Dictionary in 1934) and to oslerize appearing after a famous oration by Dr. William Osler in 1905.
Along with other true or pseudo-abbreviations Mencken mentions the American expression O.K., which he comments was already used internationally in 1936, and he discusses its various false origin histories.
There is an extensive discussion of the differences between American and English school terminology that I found useful since I never understand what it means if a character in a novel is in their third standard, or what the differences are among an usher, a master, a pro-chancellor, or a high steward.
Various American vs English euphemisms are mentioned including nerts that I mostly see in old comic strips, but was apparently very widely used in 1936. He mentions some odd euphemisms that have been used in newspapers where gonorrhea, syphilis, venereal, and even virgin were prohibited. In 1933 the new treatment of giving a patient malaria to treat tertiary syphilis was invented (the fever is beneficial; the inventor won the Nobel prize in Medicine). The New York Times spoke of it only as a dread form of insanity caused by a blood disease. Mencken tells us that in Appalachia and the Ozarks certain common words were avoided in every-day speech regardless of context. Examples include bed, tail and leg!
There is an interesting discussion of various expletives and the history of their development, e.g. hell and, in England, bloody.
In a fantastic discovery (!), I learned that the word insignia is, in Latin, the plural of insigne, and that it was formerly considered inappropriate to use insignia as a singular noun, much as some decry data or criteria as a singular.… (mais)