Professor H L Mencken

Writings in the Smart Set, Volume 4 Professor H L Mencken

In this fourth volume of his writings in the Smart Set, H. L. Mencken continues his monthly book review columns, discussing such writers as Willa Cather, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde (by way of Frank Harris's biography), Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain's posthumously published The Mysterious Stranger, and others. Two columns on the work of leading Irish writers focus on the pioneering work of J. M. Synge and Lord Dunsany. In spite of his professed insensitivity to poetry, Mencken devotes three columns to the work of such contemporary poets as Sara Teasdale, Edgar Lee Masters, and Rupert Brooke. This volume also includes Mencken's increasingly numerous works of fiction, including his longest story, "The Charmed Circle" (16,000 words), a striking anticipation of the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is even a horror tale, "The Window of Horrors." Several pungent articles about women ("A Footnote on the Duel of Sex," "The Infernal Feminine," "Woman, Lovely Woman!") show how Mencken remains the master of political incorrectness.