Mencken and Nathan's co-editorship helped to bring about a golden era for new literature and "The Smart Set". Together, they "created a uniquely liberated mass-market venue for American fiction; this fact alone suggests the importance of this magazine inrelation to American literary developments in the teens and early twenties." Circulation during their co-editorship was between 40,000 and 50,000, making it one of the most far-reaching venues for literature of the period. Mencken and Nathan cultivate a youthful readership who had grown increasingly restive and disillusioned with America in the aftermath of The Great War. During these years, "Mencken constantly exhorted his fellow critics and literary historians to provide realistic appraisals and re-evaluations of our cultural past, which would then, he felt, influence the present."