 American Mercury withAl Hirschfeld's caricature ofErnest Hemingway, November 1950 | |
| Frequency | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Founder | H. L. Mencken andGeorge Jean Nathan |
| Founded | 1924 |
| Final issue | 1981 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City |
| ISSN | 0002-998X |
The American Mercury was an Americanmagazine published from 1924[1] to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild ofH. L. Mencken and drama criticGeorge Jean Nathan.[2] The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in theUnited States through the 1920s and 1930s.
After a change in ownership in the 1940s, the magazine attractedconservative writers, includingWilliam F. Buckley. A second change in ownership in the 1950s turned the magazine into a far-right andantisemitic publication.[3][4]
It was published monthly in New York City.[5] The magazine went out of business in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence in decline and controversy.
H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had previously editedThe Smart Setliterary magazine,[6] when not producing their own books and, in Mencken's case, regular journalism forThe Baltimore Sun. With their mutual book publisherAlfred A. Knopf Sr. serving as the publisher, Mencken and Nathan createdThe American Mercury as "a serious review, the gaudiest and damnedest ever seen in the Republic", as Mencken explained the name (derived from a 19th-century publication) to his old friend and contributorTheodore 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 lateP. T. Barnum got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures.[7]
From 1924 through 1933, Mencken provided what he promised: elegantly irreverent observations of America, aimed at what he called "Americans realistically", those of sophisticated skepticism of enough that was popular and much that threatened to be.[8] (Nathan was forced to resign as his co-editor a year after the magazine started.)Simeon Strunsky inThe New York Times observed that, "The dead hand of the yokelry on the instinct for beauty cannot be so heavy if the handsome green and black cover ofThe American Mercury exists."[9] The quote was used on the subscription form for the magazine during its heyday.
The January 1924 issue sold more than 15,000 copies, and by the end of the first year the circulation was over 42,000. In early 1928, the circulation reached a height of over 84,000, but declined steadily after thestock market crash of 1929. The magazine published writing byConrad Aiken,Sherwood Anderson,James Branch Cabell,W. J. Cash,Lincoln Ross Colcord,Thomas Craven,Clarence Darrow,W. E. B. Du Bois,John Fante,William Faulkner,F. Scott Fitzgerald,Albert Halper,Langston Hughes,James Weldon Johnson,Zora Neale Hurston,Sinclair Lewis,Meridel LeSueur,Edgar Lee Masters,Victor Folke Nelson,Albert Jay Nock,Eugene O'Neill,Carl Sandburg,William Saroyan, andGeorge Schuyler. Nathan provided theater criticism, and Mencken wrote the "Editorial Notes" and "The Library", the last being book reviews and social critique, placed at the back of each volume. The magazine published other writers, from newspapermen and academics to convicts and taxi drivers, but its primary emphasis soon became non-fiction and usually satiricalessays. Its "Americana" section—containing items clipped from newspapers and other magazines nationwide—became a much-imitated feature. Mencken spiced the package withaphorisms printed in the magazine's margins whenever space allowed.[10][additional citation(s) needed]
Mencken retired as editor of the magazine at the end of 1933.[11] His chosen successor waseconomist andliterary criticHenry Hazlitt. Differences with the publisher,Alfred A. Knopf Sr., however, led Hazlitt to resign after four months.The American Mercury was next edited by Mencken's former assistantCharles Angoff.
In January 1935,The American Mercury was purchased from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., byLawrence E. Spivak. The magazine's longtime business manager, Spivak announced that he would take an active role as publisher. Paul Palmer, former Sunday editor of theNew York World, replaced Angoff as editor, andplaywright Laurence Stallings was namedliterary editor.[11]
Spivak revived theMercury for a brief but vigorous period — Mencken, Nathan, and Angoff contributed essays to the magazine again. Spivak created a company to publish the magazine,Mercury Publications. Soon, the company began publishing other magazines, includingEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine (1941) andThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1949.
In 1945, as editor, Lawrence Spivak created a radio program calledAmerican Mercury Presents "Meet the Press". It started on television on November 6, 1947, asMeet the Press.
In 1946, theMercury merged with the democratic-socialist magazineCommon Sense. By 1950, theMercury was owned byClendenin J. Ryan.[12] He changed the magazine's name toThe New American Mercury. Ryan was the financial angel forUlius Amoss, a formerOffice of Strategic Services agent who specialized in operating spy networks behind theIron Curtain to destabilizeCommunist governments and the publisher of International Services of Information in Baltimore; his son Clendenin Jr. was a sponsor ofWilliam F. Buckley Jr. and theYoung Americans for Freedom. Ryan transformedThe American Mercury in a conservative direction.
William Bradford Huie[Note 1]—whose work had appeared in the magazine before—had gleaned the beginning of a new, post-World War II Americanconservative intellectual movement. He sensed that Ryan had begun to guideThe American Mercury toward that direction. He also introduced more mass-appeal writing, by figures such as ReverendBilly Graham andFederal Bureau of Investigation directorJ. Edgar Hoover. Huie seemed en route to producing a conservative magazine.William F. Buckley Jr., whoseGod and Man at Yale was a best seller, worked for Huie'sMercury, as a young staffer. In 1955, Buckley founded the longer-living conservativeNational Review. Buckley would succeed at what Huie was unable to realize: a periodical that brought together the nascent but differing strands of this new conservative movement.
Huie faced financial difficulties sustaining theMercury in this new direction. In August 1952, he sold it to an occasional financial contributor, Russell Maguire, owner of theAuto-Ordnance Corporation (original producers of theThompson submachine gun). Rather than turn over editorial control to Maguire, Huie stepped down as editor after the January 1953 issue. He was replaced by John A. Clements, a former reporter for theNew York Journal andDaily Mirror, then director of public relations for theHearst Corporation. The sale to Maguire spelled the end ofThe American Mercury as a mainstream magazine. It survived, steadily declining, for nearly 30 more years.
Maguire's anti-semitism led to controversy and the resignation of the magazine's top editors after he took control of the editorial process in 1955.[14] In 1956,George Lincoln Rockwell was hired as a writer, and later became the founder of theAmerican Nazi Party.[15] Between 1957 and 1958,William LaVarre served as editor. In January 1959, Maguire published anAmerican Mercury editorial supporting a theory that there was aJewish conspiracy for world domination.[14]
Maguire did not remain long as the magazine's owner/publisher, but other owners continued in that direction. Maguire sold theMercury to theDefenders of the Christian Faith, Inc. (DCF), owned by ReverendGerald Burton Winrod and located inWichita, Kansas, in 1961. Reverend Winrod had been charged for violations of theSedition Act of 1918; the charges were later dropped. He had been known as "The Jayhawk Nazi" during World War II.
The DCF sold it in 1963 to the "Legion for the Survival of Freedom" of Jason Matthews. The LSF cut a deal in June 1966 with the (original)Washington Observer, finally merging withWestern Destiny, aLiberty Lobby publication owned byWillis Carto andRoger Pearson, a major recipient ofPioneer Fund grants in history. Pearson was a well-knownneo-Nazi andpro-Fascist who headed theWorld Anti-Communist League during its most blatantly pro-Fascist periods. He was a close associate ofWickliffe Draper, founder of thePioneer Fund.
A 1978 article praisedAdolf Hitler as the "greatestSpenglerian" and lamented his death.[16] Another new ownership for the troubled magazine was announced in the autumn of 1979[by whom?], and the spring 1980 issue celebrated Mencken's centennial, and lamented the passage of his era, "before the virus of social, racial, and sexual equality" grew in "fertile soil in the minds of most Americans".[citation needed]
A website calledThe American Mercury was created in 2010. It was criticized by theSouthern Poverty Law Center in the Winter 2013 edition of their magazineIntelligence Report, which called it a "Leo Frank Propaganda Site" and described it as "a resurrected and deeply anti-Semitic online version of H. L. Mencken’s defunct magazine of the same name".[13] TheAnti-Defamation League calls it "an extreme right-wing site with anti-Semitic content",[17] whileThe Forward referred to it as "H.L. Mencken’s historic magazine, resurrected online by neo-Nazis several years ago", which had "published several revisionist articles to coincide with this year’s anniversary"[18] of the Leo Frank trial.