The American Mercury was an
American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of
H. L. Mencken and drama critic
George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the
United States through the 1920s and 1930s. After a change in ownership in the 1940s, the magazine attracted
conservative writers. A second change in ownership a decade later turned the magazine into a virulently
anti-Semitic publication. The magazine went out of business in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence in decline and controversy.