The American Mercury: Volume 1, No. 1. 1924 HL Mencken, GJ Nathan. LtdEd (1/200)

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Author:H.L. Mencken / George Jean Nathan
Binding:Fine Binding
Subject:Americana
Special Attributes:1st Edition,Limited Edition,Numbered
Original/Facsimile:Original
Year Printed:1924
ISBN:Does Not Apply

The American Mercury: Volume 1, No. 1. 1924 HL Mencken, GJ Nathan. LtdEd (1/200) The American Mercury: Volume 1, Number 1. HL Mencken, GJ Nathan. LtdEd (1/200) The American Mercury Volume 1, Number 1 January 1924 Edited by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan Large Paper Edition. Limited to 200 copies The American Mercury, January 1924. Large Paper Edition. Limited to 200 copies specially printed and bound for friends of the editors and publishers; this is #32. Hardcover. Half Vellum with boldly patterned orange paper covered boards, vellum (paper) spine and corners. Folio, 127 pages. The pages are mostly uncut and unopened. In this, the first issue of the magzine: The Editorial announces the intent of the new magazine to devote itself pleasantly to exposing the nonsensicality of hallucinations of utopianism and the lot. The lead article “”The Lincoln Legend”” by Isaac R. Pennypacker, gives a fresh look at the life of President Abraham Lincoln. Pennypacker compares him as a war leader, with Jefferson Davis, and Lincoln comes up far superior. “The Drool Method in History”” by Harry E. Barnes is a humorous attack on purveyors of “pure history”. “The Tragic Hiram”” by John W. Owens is contemporary political commentary, about Borah, La Follette, Hoover and Harding. The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s. After a change in ownership in the 1940s, the magazine attracted conservative writers. A second change in ownership a decade later turned the magazine into a virulently anti-Semitic publication. It was published monthly in New York City. The magazine went out of business in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence in decline and controversy. History H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had previously edited The Smart Set literary magazine, when not producing their own books and, in Mencken’s case, regular journalism for The Baltimore Sun. With their mutual book publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., serving as the publisher, Mencken and Nathan created The American Mercury as “a serious review, the gaudiest and damnedest ever seen in the Republic”, as Mencken explained the name (derived from a 19th-century publication) to his old friend and contributor, Theodore Dreiser: What we need is something that looks highly respectable outwardly. The American Mercury is almost perfect for that purpose. What will go on inside the tent is another story. You will recall that the late P. T. Barnum got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures. From 1924 through 1933, Mencken provided what he promised: elegantly irreverent observations of America, aimed at what he called “Americans realistically”, those of sophisticated skepticism of enough that was popular and much that threatened to be. (Nathan was forced to resign as his co-editor a year after the magazine started.) Simeon Strunsky in The New York Times observed that, “The dead hand of the yokelry on the instinct for beauty cannot be so heavy if the handsome green and black cover of The American Mercury exists.”[citation needed] The quote was used on the subscription form for the magazine during its heyday. The January 1924 issue sold more than 15,000 copies and by the end of the first year, the circulation was over 42,000. In early 1928 the circulation reached a height of over 84,000, but declined steadily after the stock market crash of 1929. The magazine published writing by Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, James Branch Cabell, W. J. Cash, Thomas Craven, Clarence Darrow, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Fante, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albert Halper, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Lee Masters, Albert Jay Nock, Eugene O’Neill, Carl Sandburg, and William Saroyan. Nathan provided theater criticism, and Mencken wrote the “Editorial Notes” and “The Library”, the last being book reviews and social critique, placed at the back of each volume. The magazine published other writers, from newspapermen and academics to convicts and taxi drivers, but its primary emphasis soon became non-fiction and usually satirical essays. Its “Americana” section?containing items clipped from newspapers and other magazines nationwide?became a much-imitated feature. Mencken spiced the package with aphorisms printed in the magazine’s margins whenever space allowed. Controversy H. L. Mencken rarely flinched from controversy. He was in the thick of it after the Mercury’s April 1926 issue published “Hatrack,” a chapter from Herbert Asbury’s Up From Methodism. The chapter described purportedly true events: a prostitute in Asbury’s childhood in Farmington, Missouri, nicknamed Hatrack because of her angular physique, was a regular churchgoer who sought forgiveness. Shunned by the town’s “good people,” she returned to her sinful life. The Rev. J. Frank Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, which monitored material sold in Boston, Mass., for obscenity, concluded that “Hatrack” was immoral and had a Harvard Square magazine peddler arrested for selling a copy of that American Mercury issue. That provoked Mencken to visit Boston and personally sell Chase a copy of the magazine, the better to be arrested for the cameras. Tried and acquitted, Mencken was praised for his courageous stance for freedom of the press; it cost him more than $20,000 in legal fees, lost revenue, and lost advertising. Mencken sued Chase and won, a federal judge ruling the minister’s organization committed an illegal restraint of trade. He held that prosecutors, not private activists, should censor literature, if anyone should. But following the trial, the Solicitor of the U.S. Post Office Department Donnelly ruled the April 1926 American Mercury was obscene under the federal Comstock Law, and barred that issue from delivery through the U.S. Post Office. Mencken challenged Donnelly, aroused by the prospect of a landmark free speech case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and legendary Judge Learned Hand. But, because the April 1926 Mercury had already been mailed, an injunction was no longer an appropriate remedy and the case was moot. CONDITION: Very Good- Covers and Very Good+ Contents. (Covers have light shelf wear, one bumped corner with some wear, several small insect holes in vellum at spine hinges, vellum is lightly soiled. Paper is torn for about 5 inches at gutter of pastedown of rear board. Contents are complete, clean and intact with age toned paper.) americanmercury32 Check our other auctions and store listings for additional unusual items Click to edit textClick to edit text Listing and template services provided by inkFrog

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