Major Owen Hatteras (1912–1923) is a composite personage and pseudonym created and employed by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan for The Smart Set literary magazine and adapted by Willard Huntington Wright during his short tenure as editor. The pseudonym was used to critique American (“Puritan”) traditions and ideals, such as marriage, religion, and academe, while protecting Mencken and Nathan’s own reputations. First with the “Pertinent & Impertinent” column and eventually the “Americana” column, Hatteras observed and denigrated American institutions, frivolity and sentimentalism, materialism, racism, censorship, and conservatism.