Smart Set Year 1917 Magazine Back Issues

The Smart Set was an American monthly literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, The Smart Set offered many up-and-coming authors their start and gave them access to a relatively large audience. Following a dispute with owner Eltinge Warner over an unprinted article mocking the national grief over President Warren G. Harding's death, Mencken and Nathan departed the publication to create The American Mercury in 1924. After their departure, Warner sold the publication to press mogul William Randolph Hearst. Although circulation increased under Hearst's ownership, the magazine's content declined in quality. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the magazine failed to survive the economic slump and ceased publication in June 1930. Half a decade after its dissolution, critic Louis Kronenberger hailed The Smart Set in The New York Times Book Review as one of the greatest literary publications due to its influence over American culture during its brief existence. "You were very conscious that it was making literary history," Kronenberger wrote, "it was teaching a literary America that went about on all fours how to walk."