Essays and Introductions, 1899-1922

Throughout his career, H. L. Mencken wrote prefaces and introductions to numerous volumes, and this book gathers many of those pieces, which reflect his consuming interest in issues relating to literature, politics, society, and culture. Among the most interesting are two long introductions to plays by Henrik Ibsen in 1909, which exhibit Mencken's admiration for this revolutionary playwright. Later he wrote an introduction to a pair of plays by the French author Eugène Brieux. Introductions to books by Oscar Wilde, Edwin Muir, and Arthur Morrison further reveal Mencken's tastes in literature, while in his introduction to James Nelson Wood's Democracy and the Will to Power (1921) he exhibits his disdain of the very principle of democracy. This book also contains two full-length works: George Bernard Shaw: His Plays (1905), Mencken's first critical treatise and the first book about the English playwright; and his translation of Friedrich Nietzsche's iconcolastic work The Antichrist (1920). Once again, Mencken's distinctive views and his pungent manner of expressing them are on full display.