Newspaper Work, 1918-1925

As he settled into writing his occasional articles for the New York Evening Mail, H. L. Mencken chose a wide array of topics for his pontifications, from the "woman question" ("How to Get a Husband," "The Duel of Sex") to cuisine ("The Decay of Victualry") to political and social reform ("The Uplift and Other Imbecilities"). But literary issues remained paramount, and Mencken discourses on poetry, novels, and related subjects. Later, Mencken wrote pungent articles for the Sydney Bulletin on the disaster of Prohibition. When he began writing pieces for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, the focus was almost exclusively on literature. It was here that he wrote his reviews of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, while also discussing such other writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Branch Cabell, Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Ring Lardner, O. Henry. As always, Mencken reveals the perspicacy and wit that made him one of the greatest journalists and critics of his era.