Though best known for his caustic newspaper columns, H. L. Mencken's most enduring contribution to American literature may be his autobiographical writings, most of which first appeared in the New Yorker. In Happy Days, Mencken recalls memories of a safe and happy boyhood in the Baltimore of the 1880s and celebrates a way of life that he saw swiftly changing--from a time of straw hats and buggy rides to locomotives and bread lines.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A book to be read twice a year by young and old, as long as life lasts." -- Atlantic
"A chronicle of childhood for which truth and a sense of balance have long been clamoring. To say it is a readable book is an impertinence in the case of Mr. Mencken." -- New York Times
"Probably no man alive more guilelessly enjoys hearing himself talk on paper, or is better able to infect others with the pleasure, than Henry Louis Mencken... Good old Mencken bravura at its brassiest. For all its mannerisms and unsubtlties the Mencken vernacular is extraordinarily vigorous and fine." -- Time
"The basis of the book's delight is that the Baltimore of the days when Cleveland was president and soft crabs sold for two and a fraction cents a piece... is miraculously seen again through the eyes of a secure young savage of the more fortunate bourgeoisie." -- Saturday Review
"Happy Days enjoys a throne of honors atop that vaunted heap of letters... Gleeful, doxological passages on the glories of an uncomplicated young life crowd this first volume." -- Brendan O'Donnell, Ex Libris
Book Description
With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mencken on his nonage,
By Spuds McGee (North Dakota) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Happy Days: Mencken's Autobiography: 1880-1892 (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) (Paperback)
H.L. Mencken temporarily resigned from his job as a newspaper columnist before the Second World War, deeming his political opinions too controversial for print. In the ensuing interregnal period, he focused his attention on writing a series of memoirs, which later turned into a three volume autobiography, of which Happy Days is the first part. In its pages, he relates his early fascination with police officers, food, literature and pedagogues, subjects that forever interested him. He also, astonishingly, recounts successful athletic exploits (astonishing because he grew into a rotund and stumpy man, who considered sports "nonsensical"). Readers familiar with Mencken's caustic columns will enjoy learning how his strong opinions were formed. Readers unfamiliar with him should still find this book highly palatable, for it is colorfully written, interfusing "the language of the free lunch counter" with latin phrases and searing adjectives. This memoir is as well-written as later newspaper columnist Russell Baker's "Growing Up," but is a hell of a lot funnier.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
AT the instant I first became aware of the cosmos we all infest I was sitting in my mother's lap and blinking at a great burst of lights, some of them red and others green, but most of them only the bright yellow of flaring gas. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
hired girl Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Baltimore, Knapp's Institute, Union Square, Ellicott City, United States, Aunt Sophie, City Hall, New York, The Moose Hunters, Are You Ready, Chesapeake Bay, Professor Knapp, Abraham Lincoln, Back Basin, Barrel Fairbanks, Miss Bertha, Old Wesley, Washington Monument, Baltimore Polytechnic, Grandmother Mencken, Huckleberry Finn, Key West, Salvation Army, Tramp Abroad, Useful Pastimes New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
AT the instant I first became aware of the cosmos we all infest I was sitting in my mother's lap and blinking at a great burst of lights, some of them red and others green, but most of them only the bright yellow of flaring gas. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
hired girl Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Baltimore, Knapp's Institute, Union Square, Ellicott City, United States, Aunt Sophie, City Hall, New York, The Moose Hunters, Are You Ready, Chesapeake Bay, Professor Knapp, Abraham Lincoln, Back Basin, Barrel Fairbanks, Miss Bertha, Old Wesley, Washington Monument, Baltimore Polytechnic, Grandmother Mencken, Huckleberry Finn, Key West, Salvation Army, Tramp Abroad, Useful Pastimes New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 37
books:
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2
books
cite this book:
- Happy Days by H. L. Mencken in Front Matter, and page 315
- Mencken: A Life (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) by Professor Fred Hobson in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Adam Bede (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot on page 173
- Frederick Douglass by Booker T. Washington in Back Matter
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classic) by Mark Twain on page 167
See all 37 books this book cites
- Mencken: A Life (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) by Professor Fred Hobson in Back Matter
- American Journalists: Getting the Story (Oxford Profiles) by Donald A. Ritchie on page 74
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