SOURCE: "James Huneker," in A Book of Prefaces, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917, pp. 151-94.

Mencken was one of the most influential figures in American literature from the First World War until the early years of the Great Depression. His strongly individualistic, irreverent outlook on life and his vigorous, invective-charged writing style helped establish the iconoclastic spirit of the Jazz Age and significantly shaped the direction of American literature. In the following essay, Mencken praises Huneker's enthusiasm for the arts as well as his exuberant essays on authors and composers.

1

Edgar Allan Poe, I am fond of believing, earned as a critic a good deal of the excess of praise that he gets as a romancer and a poet, and another over-estimated American dithyrambist, Sidney Lanier, wrote the best textbook of prosody in English [The Science of English Verse]; but in general the critical writing done in the United States...