Winter 1935

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) was a poet, critic, novelist, teacher, and co-founder of the Southern Review. He was appointed the nation’s first Poet Laureate in 1986. Author of over two dozen books, he was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his novel All the King’s Men. He also published a book of short stories, several selections of critical and historical essays, a biography, and two studies of race relations in America.

H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English. Mencken is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.