In 1919 Alfred J. Knopf published the first edition of H. L. Mencken's philological study, The American Language. John V. A. Weaver, a reviewer of books on the Chicago Daily News, read it. Unlike some of the critics of the time, he took it seriously. "That first edition," wrote Mencken, "closed with some rhetoric that soon succumbed to more interesting stuff, but while it lasted it set Johnny Weaver to writing in the American language—the first poet, so far as I know, to attempt that operation, and the most successful to this day."
