A Book of Prefaces was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1917 — one of Knopf’s earliest titles and the beginning of a publisher-critic relationship that would shape American literary culture for decades. The book contains four long essays: on Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser, James Huneker (the music and literary critic whom Mencken admired as a model), and “Puritanism as a Literary Force.”
The Conrad essay established Mencken’s critical credentials: his analysis of Conrad’s narrative method, his understanding of Conrad’s philosophical pessimism, and his ability to write about fiction with the same technical precision that a musician brings to a discussion of composition demonstrated that American criticism could be both intellectually serious and stylistically alive. The Dreiser essay was a polemic as much as a critical appreciation — Mencken championed Dreiser as the great realist against the genteel critics who found him crude and immoral — and it helped establish Dreiser’s reputation at a moment when it was under severe attack.
The final essay, “Puritanism as a Literary Force,” is the most important: a sustained argument that American literature is stunted by the Puritan inheritance — the conviction that art must be morally improving, that pleasure is suspect, and that any frank treatment of sexuality or social reality is dangerous. This essay inaugurated Mencken’s lifelong campaign against censorship, sentimentality, and intellectual timidity in American culture.
Collecting A Book of Prefaces
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1917): Green cloth. One of Knopf’s earliest publications.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $200–$600
- Without jacket: $40–$100