Biography hl mencken quotes baltimore sun

Henry Louis Mencken was the wonder boy of American journalism.

Born in Baltimore in 1880, he found employment as a reporter at its raffish Herald in 1899, became city editor when he was twenty-three, and two years later was made editor in chief. When the Herald soon thereafter collapsed, he leaped nimbly to The Sun and remained there for most of the rest of his life, principally as its star columnist but in numerous advisory and managerial roles as well.

Meantime, he edited two hugely influential national magazines, The Smart Set and The American Mercury, for which he wrote criticism that changed the American literary map, and, as Terry Teachout puts it,