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The American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. 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, including William F. Buckley. A second change in ownership in the 1950s turned the magazine into a far-right and 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 Al ...
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Al Hirschfeld
Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Early life and career Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex apartment at 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Isaac, was a German Jewish traveling salesman, while his mother Rebecca was from a family of strict, Russian Orthodox Jews; his maternal grandparents refused to eat in his parents' non-kosher home. Hirschfeld described how the family would not permit bread in the house during Passover, and during this time the family would eat matzah and ham sandwiches. He moved with his family to New York City in 1915, where he received art training at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. In 1924, Hirschfeld traveled to Paris and London, where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. When he returned to the United States, a friend, fabled Broadway press agent R ...
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Encyclopædia Britannica
The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopedia, online encyclopaedia. Printed for 244 years, the ''Britannica'' was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, in three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size; the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889) and Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary ...
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Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. An early innovator of jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Growing up in the Midwest, Hughes became a prolific writer at an early age. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He studied at Columbia University in New York City. Although he dropped out, he gained notice from New York publishers, first in '' The Crisis'' magazine and then from book publishers, subsequently becoming known in the Harlem creative community. His first poetry collection, ''The Weary Blues'', was published in 1926. Hughes eventually graduated from Lincoln University. In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published short story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. From 1942 to 1962, as the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an in-depth week ...
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Albert Halper
Albert Halper (1904–1984) was an American novelist and playwright. Life Albert Halper was born on a kitchen table on the west side of Chicago on August 3, 1904, the son of Lithuanian immigrants from Vilna. His father, Isaac, owned a series of tiny grocery stores; his mother, Rebecca, stayed at home, raising their six children. After graduating Marshall High School, young Albert worked in a factory, warehouse, and post office, all the time committed to becoming a writer. the death of his mother in 1928 eliminated his sole reason for remaining in Chicago, and when offered a promotion at the post office, he quit the next day and soon left for New York. In New York, he became a protégé of Elliot E. Cohen, the brilliant editor of the ''Menorah Journal,'' and began to publish in the American Mercury, Dial, and other prominent literary magazines. His first novel, Union Square (1933), traces the lives of Depression era New Yorkers living in that neighborhood, and was a best selle ...
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William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County, Mississippi, Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature, often considered the greatest writer of Southern United States literature, Southern literature and regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel ''Soldiers' Pay'' (1925). He went back ...
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John Fante
John Fante (April 8, 1909 – May 8, 1983) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel ''Ask the Dust'' (1939) about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depression-era Los Angeles. It is widely considered the great Los Angeles novel, and is one in a series of four, published between 1938 and 1985, that are now collectively called "The Bandini Quartet." ''Ask the Dust'' was adapted into a 2006 film starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek. Fante's published works while he lived included five novels, one novella, and a short story collection. Additional works, including two novels, two novellas, and two short story collections, were published posthumously. His screenwriting credits include, most notably, '' Full of Life'' (1956, based on his 1952 novel by that name), '' Jeanne Eagels'' (1957), and the 1962 films '' Walk on the Wild Side'' and '' The Reluctant Saint''. Early life Fante was born in ...
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Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the 19th century for high-profile representations of trade union causes, and in the 20th century for several criminal matters, including the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, the Scopes trial, Scopes "monkey" trial, and the Ossian Sweet defense. He was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. Darrow was also a well-known public speaker, debater, and writer. Darrow is considered by some legal analysts and lawyers to be the greatest lawyer of the 20th century. He was posthumously inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame. Called a "sophisticated country lawyer",Linder, Douglas O. (1997)"Who Is Clarence Darrow?", ''The Clarence Darrow Home Page'' Darrow's wit and eloquence made him one of the most prominent attorneys and civil libertarians in the nation. Personal life Clarence Darrow was born in the small town of ...
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Thomas Craven
Thomas Craven (January 6, 1888 – February 27, 1969) was an American author, critic and lecturer, who promoted the work of American Regionalist painters, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, among others. He was known for his caustic comments and being the "leading decrier of the School of Paris.""Thomas Craven, Author, Dead; Caustic Art Critic and Lecturer,"
New York Times, March 1, 1969.


Life

He was born in 1888, in , the son of Richard Price and Virginia Bates Cravens. He graduated from
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Lincoln Ross Colcord
Lincoln Ross Colcord (August 14, 1883 – November 16, 1947) was an American journalist and author of short fiction. He wrote for a number of American newspapers and magazines beginning in 1908, and throughout the Woodrow Wilson presidency (1913–1921). Early life Both of Colcord's parents, Jane French (Sweetser) and Captain Lincoln Alden Colcord, came from Maine families with generations-long traditions of life on and around the sea. Lincoln Colcord delivered his son Lincoln aboard the commercial sailing ship, the ''Charlotte A. Littlefield'', during a storm while navigating around Cape Horn. Aside from time spent on shore at Penobscot Bay or in Searsport, Maine, Lincoln and his older sister, Joanna Carver Colcord, spent most of their childhood at sea aboard the various sailing vessels captained by their father, visiting ports as far away as Hong Kong as part of the merchant trade. Education and writing career Jane Colcord tutored her children at sea, and Lincoln's early ...
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James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell (; April 14, 1879  – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and ''belles-lettres''. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare". Although escapist, Cabell's works are ironic and satirical. Mencken disputed Cabell's claim to romanticism and characterized him as "really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy heroes ... chase dragons precisely as stockbrockers play golf." According to Louis D. Rubin, Cabell saw art as an escape from life, but found that, once the artist creates his ideal world, it is made up of the same elements that make the real one. Interest in Cabell declined in the 1930s, a decline that has been attributed in part to his failu ...
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Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio. In 1912, Anderson had a nervous breakdown that led him to abandon his business and family to become a writer. At the time, he moved to Chicago and was eventually married three additional times. His most enduring work is the short-story sequence '' Winesburg, Ohio,'' which launched his career. Throughout the 1920s, Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry. Though his books sold reasonably well, '' Dark Laughter'' (1925), a novel inspired by Anderson's time in New Orleans during the 1920s, was his only bestseller. Early life Sherwood Berton Anderson was born on September 13, 1876, at 142 S. Lafayette Street in Camden, Ohio, a farming town with a population of a ...
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Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography. Biography Early years Aiken was the eldest son of William Ford and Anna (Potter) Aiken. In Savannah, Aiken's father became a respected physician and eye surgeon, while his mother was the daughter of a prominent Massachusetts Unitarian minister. For the first eleven years of Aiken's life, his family lived at 228 East Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah. On February 27, 1901, William Ford Aiken murdered his wife and then committed suicide. According to his 1952 autobiography, ''Ushant'', Aiken, then 11 years old, heard the two gunshots and discovered the bodies immediately thereafter. After his parents' deaths, he was raised by his great-aunt and uncle in Cambridge, Massachuset ...
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