Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Question Of Influence: William Cowper Brann And Henry Louis Mencken, Dale Owen Bishop

Theses and Dissertations

A major critic of H. L. Mencken and a co-worker of his on the Baltimore Sun have both theorized that Mencken was influenced by a little-remembered Texas iconoclast who was assassinated in 1898, William Cowper Brann. Investigation revealed that Brann and Mencken agreed on many topics such as Prohibition, politics and religion among others. Mencken's early style compares well with Brann's, and they shared many techniques and preferences for particular words standard in the debunker's vocabulary. Research revealed that Mencken even published an article in 1900, at the age of twenty, in the magazine that had formerly been published by …