Description: H. L. Mencken was among the most prolific letter-writers in American literature. Some of his most interesting letters were written to George Sterling, a pupil of Ambrose Bierce, who wrote The Testimony of the Suns (1903) and A Wine of Wizardry (1909). The letters span the period 1914-26, when Mencken established himself as the leading literary and cultural critic in America. The correspondence -- which survives nearly intact on both sides -- covers a wealth of subjects, including Mencken's editorship of the Smart Set (1914-23) and American Mercury (1924-26), mutual colleagues (Bierce, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis), and, most entertainingly, each author's flagrant flouting of Prohibition, as well as Sterling's carnal adventures with a variety of women in California. The correspondence comes to an abrupt end with Sterling's suicide in late 1926. These letters shed a vivid light on the literary, political, social, and cultural temper of the Jazz Age.

Please Wait