Professor H L Mencken

Writings in the Baltimore Evening Sun, 1920-1921 Professor H L Mencken

When H. L. Mencken resumed writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun in early 1920, after a nearly three-year hiatus, he plunged immediately into the political, social, and cultural issues of the dawning Jazz Age. Much of his focus was on the manifold absurdities and injustices of Prohibition, which he vigorously opposed and mercilessly lampooned as a violation of civil liberties. The impending presidential election, in which the Republican Warren G. Harding would face the Democrat James M. Cox, led to hilarious articles on the buffooneries at the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Harding won in a landslide, and Mencken wrote pungent pieces on Harding's inauguration in March 1921. Along the way, Mencken found time to write articles on subjects ranging from Albert Einstein to the Dempsey-Carpentier boxing match of July 2, 1921, along with reviews of books by H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, James Branch Cabell, and others.