The Smart Set - The Mencken and Nathan Years

The Mencken and Nathan Years

Having little interest in running a magazine, Crowe gave control of The Smart Set to Eltinge Warner who then appointed both Mencken and Nathan as co-editors with total artistic control. While Warner remained in control of the magazine’s accounts (circulation, advertising, and bookkeeping), Mencken and Nathan focused on literary content. In a series of measures to economize, Mencken and Nathan relocated The Smart Set office to a smaller location and reduced the staff to themselves and secretary Sara Golde. Additionally, Warner reprinted previous issues of The Smart Set under the title Clever Stories. In their most successful effort to boost revenue, Mencken and Nathan began the pulp magazine Parisienne in 1915 as a place to publish a surplus of manuscripts they deemed too inferior for The Smart Set. Parisienne generated significant profits which they then funneled back into the production cost of The Smart Set. The co-editors sold Parisienne to Warner and Crowe in 1916 and repeated exactly the same process with Saucy Stories and, in 1920,The Black Mask.

Mencken and Nathan’s co-editorship helped to bring about a golden era for new literature and The Smart Set. Although circulation during their co-editorship was between 40,000 and 50,000, it was one of the most far-reaching venues for literature of the period. During this time the magazine featured works by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill and Dashiell Hammett among others. In May 1915 The Smart Set published two stories from James Joyce’s Dubliners, the first time Joyce appears in an American publication. The magazine also introduced F. Scott Fitzgerald in September 1919 when it published his short story “Babe in the Woods.” In addition to introducing new literary talent, the two editors were also renowned social critics who lampooned virtually every facet of American culture. Although they were renowned for their satire, their increasingly controversial material became the reason for their departure from The Smart Set and would set in motion the end of the magazine itself.