H.L. Mencken, in his illustrious career as a journalist, made his reputation with satirical writing and controversial ideals. Although his is a name not customarily associated with short fiction, it was his first literary love. From 1900 to 1919, he published nearly 60 stories and short-shorts, sometimes pseudonymously. Here for the first time, 30 of Mencken's thoroughly entertaining stories are collected, showcasing Mencken's wit and skill in a medium for which he is not well known. Meet a bumbling anarchist newspaper editor; the `Charmed Circle' of Long Island in a story strikingly prescient of F. Scott Fitzgerald; a shop owner whose mannequins belie a horrific secret; and a pair of wily entrepreneurs working in the Caribbean, among plenty of other excellent, amusing, and memorable stories.

 

"Superb, clever, or hilarious use of language… Read Epithalamium, a sendup of the social rigmarole of marriage for its exquisite choice of words, or the Poe-esque The Window of Horrors, about a clothier and his obsession with life-like mannequins, for its chills. For quintessential Mencken, read The Man of God, whose lowly grocer becomes an evangelist." - Publishers Weekly