The American Mercury

The American Mercury was a periodical first published in 1924 and edited by the noted drama critic George Jean Nathan and the journalistic gadfly Henry Louis Mencken. The magazine became a lively forum for critical commentary and would feature work by virtually every important American writer during the 1920s and 1930s.

Related Topics:
George Jean Nathan - Henry Louis Mencken

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Nathan and Mencken had previously edited the literary magazine Smart Set together. The American Mercury was published by Alfred A. Knopf. Mencken, who planned "a serious review, the gaudiest and damndest ever seen in the Republic," explained the title to his old friend and contributor, Theodore Dreiser: "What we need is something that looks highly respectable outwardly. The American Mercury is almost perfect for that purpose. What will go on inside the tent is another story. You will recall that the late P. T. Barnum got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures." From 1924 to 1933 Mencken provided highly irreverent commentary on the American scene in this magazine aimed at what he called the "Americans realistically," to wit, those sophisticated Americans who were skeptical of much that was popular. Simeon Strunsky once wrote in the New York Times that, ""The dead hand of the yokelry on the instinct for beauty cannot be so heavy if the handsome green and black cover of The American Mercury exists." The quote was used on the subscription form for the magazine during its heyday.

Related Topics:
Smart Set - Alfred A. Knopf - Theodore Dreiser - Simeon Strunsky - New York Times

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The January 1924 issue sold more than 15,000 copies and by the end of that first year the circulation was over 42,000. After Nathan resigned as co-editor in 1925. In early 1928 the circulation reached a height of over 84,000, but declined steadily after the Stock Market crash. The magazine published literature by Eugene O'Neill, Carl Sandburg, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, and, of course, Mencken himself. But the magazine also published others, from newspapermen and academics to convicts and taxi drivers. However, the primary emphasis of the magazine quickly became non-fiction, usually in the form of satirical essays. The "Americana" section contained items clipped from newspapers and magazines around the country that the editors found of interest. Mencken would also include aphorisms in the margins of the magazine as space allowed.

Related Topics:
Eugene O'Neill - Carl Sandburg - William Faulkner - Sinclair Lewis - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Langston Hughes - W.E.B. Du Bois - Sherwood Anderson - Edgar Lee Masters

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The height of the magazine's notoriety came in April 1926 with the publication of "Hatrack," a chapter from the book Up from Methodism by Herbert Asbury. Allegedly the true story of a small-town prostitute in Farmington, Missouri, when Asbury was a child, she was given the nickname "Hatrack" because of her angular physique. Despite her life of sin, Hatrack went to church every Sunday, seeking forgiveness, but was shunned by the good people of the town and returned to her life of sin. The Reverend J. Frank Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, which monitored material sold in Boston for to determine if literature was obscene. Chase found the story to be immoral and arrested a magazine peddler on Harvard Square for selling the issue. After hearing of the arrest Mencken went to Boston and sold Chase a copy of the issue so he could be arrested as well in front of photographers. Mencken was tried and acquitted, although his stand for free speech cost him more than $20,000 in legal fees, lost revenue, and a flood of lost advertising. Mencken sued Chase and a federal judge ruled that Chase?s organization was guilty of an illegal restraint of trade and that prosecutors, rather than private activist groups, should censor literature.

Related Topics:
Up from Methodism - Herbert Asbury - J. Frank Chase - Watch and Ward Society - Harvard Square

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However, after the trial Horace J. Donnelly, the Solicitor of the U. S. Post Office Department, ruled that the April issue of the Mercury was obscene and that according to the federal Comstock Law, sending the issue through the mail was a federal offense, and no Post Office employee could deliver the magazine. When Mencken challenged Donnelly's ruling, he aroused the possibility of raising a landmark Free Speech case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Learned Hand, but since the issue had already been mailed an injunction was no longer an appropriate remedy.

Related Topics:
Horace J. Donnelly - U. S. Post Office Department - Comstock Law - Free Speech - Second Circuit Court of Appeals - Learned Hand - Injunction

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Mencken resigned as the editor of the Mercury at the end of 1933 and was replaced by Charles Angoff, his assistant. Initially the magazine moved even farther to the Left and a year later Knopf sold the magazine to Paul Palmer, who had worked for the Baltimore Sun papers. In 1936 the magazine was reduced to digest size. In 1939 it was sold to Lawrence E. Spivak, the magazine's business manager and the Mercury had a brief revival in which Mencken, Nathan and Angoff again contributed pieces; Spivak created the Mercury Press to publish the magazine, and soon added other magazines to their list: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941 and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1949, among a number of others. (Spivak also began a radio show, then a television show, initially know as American Mercury Presents: Meet the Press and later as simply Meet the Press.) In 1946 the magazine merged with Common Sense, but in December 1950 it was sold to Clendenin J. Ryan and published as the New American Mercury and began a sharp rightward turn. The journalist William Bradford Huie bought the magazine in February 1951 and in August 1952 he in turn sold it to J. Russell Maguire, at which point the Mercury extended its hard turn to the Right, publishing pieces by J. Edgar Hoover and Billy Graham. A May 1951 article was entitled "Is Truman Honest?" During this period the magazine was often attacked by the Anti-Defamation League for being anti-Semitic; a number of anti-Jewish comments, whether in context or not, were gleaned from Mencken's writing for reprint.

Related Topics:
Charles Angoff - Paul Palmer - Baltimore Sun - Lawrence E. Spivak - Mercury Press - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - 1941 - Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - 1949 - Meet the Press - Common Sense - Clendenin J. Ryan - William Bradford Huie - J. Russell Maguire - J. Edgar Hoover - Billy Graham - Anti-Defamation League

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In the greatest irony of the magazine's history, the Mercury was sold to the Defenders of the Christian Faith, Inc. in 1961. Two years later it was sold to the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. in Texas. In June 1966 an agreement was made with the Washington Observer, followed by a merger with Western Destiny. At this point the magazine was a quarterly and circulation was below 7,000 and the articles largely attacked Jews and African-Americans. A new ownership was announced in the fall of 1979 and the spring issue of 1980 celebrated the centennial of Mencken's birth while also lamenting the passage of the time in which he lived before "the virus of social, racial and sexual equality" had found "fertile soil in the minds of most Americans." The final pages of the last issue of The American Mercury, in the magazine's 57th year, were devoted to a plea for contributions to create a computer index with information about the 15,000 most dangerous political activists in the United States.

Related Topics:
Washington Observer - Western Destiny

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