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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 Alfred A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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. Personal life Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex at 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved with his family to New York City in 1915, where he received his art training at the National Academy of Design. He married chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby in 1927; the couple separated in 1932 and divorced in 1943. That same year he married actress Dolly Haas. Haas died in 1994, aged 84. They had one child, a daughter, Nina (b. 1945). In 1996, he married Louise Kerz, a theatre historian (b. 1936). Career 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 Richard Maney, showed one of Hirschfeld's drawings to an editor at the '' New York Herald Tribune'', which got Hirschf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corpora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 seller ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel Prize laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature. Born in New Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner's family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when he was a young child. With the outbreak of 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 to Oxford and wrote '' Sartoris'' (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published ''The Sound and the Fury''. The following year, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. He was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. 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. He defended high-profile clients in many famous trials of the early 20th century, including teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks (1924); teacher John T. Scopes in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925), in which he opposed statesman and orator William Jennings Bryan; and Ossian Sweet in a racially charged self-defense case (1926). Early life Clarence Darrow was born in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 |
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 earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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." 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 failure to move out of his fantasy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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. On February 27, 1901, Dr. Aiken murdered his wife and then committed suicide. According to his 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, Massachusetts, attending Middlesex School, then Harvard University. At Harvard, Aiken edited the ''Advocate'' with T. S. Eliot, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stock Market Crash Of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The Great Crash is mostly associated with October 24, 1929, called ''Black Thursday'', the day of the largest sell-off of shares in U.S. history, and October 29, 1929, called ''Black Tuesday'', when investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Background The "Roaring Twenties", the decade following World War I that led to the crash, was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
