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H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956) was a twentieth century journalist and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore." He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century.

Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a cigar factory owner. He became a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1899, and moved to the Baltimore Sun.. in 1906. In 1908 he also began writng as a literary critic for the magazine The Smart Set. He founded his own influential newspaper, The American Mercury in January of 1924, which soon had a national circulation.

Mencken was an outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights, an opponent of persecution and of injustice and of the puritanism and self-righteousness that masks the oppressive impulse. As a nationally syndicated columnist and author of numerous books he played an important role in ending America's preoccupation with fundamentalist Christianity, and opened the way for a secularist revival.

Mencken's views are usually regarded as libertarian by most commentators, but Mencken's writing also had a strong elitist strain. He sometimes took positions in his essays more for shock value than for deep-seated conviction, such as his essay arguing that the Anglo-Saxon race was demonstrably the most cowardly in human history, published at a time when much of his readership considered Anglo-Saxons the noble pinacle of civilization.

Mencken died in 1956 and was interred in the Loudon Park Cemetery[?] in Baltimore, Maryland. His epitaph reads:



Mencken suggested this epitaph in "The Smart Set[?]." After his death, it was inscribed on a plaque in the lobby of the Baltimore Sun.

P.J. O'Rourke called Mencken the "...creator of a new and distinct style of journalism I like to refer to as 'big-city smartass.'"

See some of his brilliance Here and Here