The Constant Circle: H.L. Mencken and His Friends

Recognized until his death in 1956 as the outstanding literary critic of his generation, H. L. Mencken also excelled as a journalist, editor, and author. Characterized as the enfant terrible of American letters, he was famous for his vitriolic attacks on the hypocrisy and bigotry he saw in much of American life. Yet Mencken was surrounded by a circle of devoted friends and was known to be a gentle, loving, and compassionate husband. Because of her lifelong friendship with his wife, Sara Haardt, Sara Mayfield was not only part of Mencken’s circle but also a trusted confidante of the literary lion himself. Drawing on letters, diaries, notes, and private conversations, The Constant Circle captures the essence of a man who left an indelible mark on American intellectual life and letters. Great and near-great figures of the era move through Mayfield’s candid and unpretentious account: Hemingway, Dreiser, George Jean Nathan, O'Neill, Faulkner, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead, Sinclair Lewis, Rebecca West, Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, Thomas Wolfe, and presidents from Wilson to Truman. Richard Freedman notes that
with a minimum of pious hoopla about the Algonquin Wits, Miss Mayfield brings the whole gracefully doomed era of the American literary 20’s to life.
When The Constant Circle was first published in 1968, the New Yorker printed a review by Edmund Wilson titled
The Aftermath of Mencken.
That review appears in its entirety as the introduction to this paperback edition.