Heathen Days, 1890–1936 was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1943, completing the autobiographical trilogy. Where Happy Days covered childhood and Newspaper Days covered young manhood, Heathen Days is organized thematically rather than chronologically — each chapter is a self-contained episode from Mencken’s life, arranged not by date but by subject.
The chapters cover a remarkable range: Mencken in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, Mencken at the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, Mencken in Hollywood (which he found even more absurd than he had imagined), Mencken eating, drinking, and talking in the saloons and restaurants of Baltimore, Mencken traveling by train through the American heartland. Each episode is a small masterpiece of comic narrative — Mencken had an infallible eye for the absurd and a gift for rendering it in prose that was simultaneously devastating and good-natured.
The title captures Mencken’s self-image: he was a heathen in a nation of believers, a skeptic in a culture of enthusiasm, a man who found his pleasures in beer, good conversation, and the spectacle of human folly rather than in religion, reform, or uplift. The trilogy, taken together, is one of the great American autobiographies — not for the importance of the life it records (Mencken’s life was interesting but not dramatic) but for the quality of the prose and the vividness of the world it evokes.
Collecting Heathen Days
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1943): Blue cloth, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Without jacket: $8–$15