Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956) ("H. L."). American author, editor, and journalist. Born in Baltimore, MD, into a German immigrant family, Henry Louis Mencken worked in his father’s cigar factory for two years after graduating high school. At age eighteen he became a cub reporter for the Baltimore Herald, rising quickly through the journalistic ranks while also publishing poetry and short stories in national magazines. He became literary editor of the Smart Set magazine in 1909, later becoming co-editor with George Jean Nathan, while continuing to be a prolific and bold social and literary critic. He and Nathan founded the American Mercury magazine in 1923. Mencken reviewed many of Cather’s novels, and she began corresponding with him about her work early in her career as a novelist. Her stories “Her Boss” (1919) and “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) appeared in the Smart Set, and from 1920 Cather and Mencken shared Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as a publisher (Mencken was a close personal friend of both Alfred and Blanche Knopf). Mencken was one of the strongest voices in favor of My Ántonia (1918), and Alfred Knopf commissioned him to write an appreciation of Cather for The Borzoi 1920; however, Cather’s attempt to manage his response to One of Ours (1922) by writing him in advance of publication and soliciting a review failed—Mencken wrote one of the most stingingly negative reviews of it. Mencken fell out of public favor in the early 1930s but became popular again with the publication of his fourth revision of The American Language in 1936, which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. He spent the final years of his life unable to write or speak as the result of a massive stroke in 1948.

Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924), British novelist and master mariner. Born in the Ukraine to Polish patriot parents, Conrad's fiction, all written in English, often drew on his maritime experiences. He published only one story in McClure’s Magazine, “The Brute” (1907), but had various other dealings with S. S. McClure’s other publishing enterprises from 1898 to 1910. During a trip to London in 1909, Cather attempted to secure more material from him for the magazine. Cather's letters indicate that she continued to read Conrad, often praised as a modern master of narrative technique, closely and seriously.