Mencken’s first major book of criticism champions three writers he thought American readers undervalued: Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser and the critic James Huneker. It closes with a long attack on Puritanism as a literary force, blaming moral censorship and the comstockery of the day for the timidity of American writing. This fourth printing adds a short preface.
The 1917 broadside that made Mencken the leading scourge of genteel taste in America. Download the free EPUB.