Henry Louis Mencken, known as H.L. Mencken, was an American writer and publisher, whose American Mercury was a leading journal in the early part of the 20th century. Mencken`s acerbic views on American culture predated the Roaring Twenties, a period when he was much more in vogue than during the World War I period when he first began publishing them.
Mencken took particular exception to the modern forms of puritanism, which might be separated from the original theology, still had the power to influence popular opinion, negatively in the view of Mencken. He derided Puritanism in his Book of Prefaces, published in 1917:
On the ethical side, however, Calvinism is dying a much harder death, and we are still a long way from the enlightenment. Save where Continental influences have measurably corrupted the Puritan idea -- e.g. in such cities as New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans -- the prevailing American view of the world and its mysteries is still a moral one, and no other human concern gets half the attention that is endlessly lavished upon the problem of conduct, particularly of the other fellow.He derided the influence on public opinion of "boobs," whom he collectively categorized as the "booboisie."
After his death, some of his private papers came to light which indicated feelings of anti-semitism.