Serpent in Eden: H.L. Mencken and the South

by Fred Hobson, Gerald W. Johnson (Foreword)

The appearance in 1920 of H. L. Mencken's scathing essay about the intellectual and cultural impoverishment of the South, "The Sahara of the Bozart", set off a firestorm of reaction in the region that continued unabated for much of the next decade. In Serpent in Eden, Mencken scholar Fred Hobson examines Mencken's love-hate relationship with the South. He explores not only Mencken's savage criticism of the region but also his efforts to encourage southern writers and the bold "little magazines", such as the Reviewer and the Double Dealer, that started up in the South during the 1920s.

Originally published in 1974.

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258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Dr. Fred Colby Hobson Jr. is an English scholar whose wor focused on the U.S. South. He is a retired Professor of English, most recently at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Hobson received his A.B. in English from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, his M.A. in History from Duke University, and his Ph.D. English from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 1972. Before joining UNC in 1989, Hobson taught at the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University.

Hobson's work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has written numerous books on American literature and intellectual history.

Reviews

[Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Venom Needed

Excellent analysis of how essayist and muckraker Mencken, whose wife hailed from Montgomery, Alabama, directly challenged the South and its intellectuals to frame Southern writers' circumspection and forever forge Southern literature into that penned by the likes of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren.