Jiří Mahen (December 12, 1882 - May 22, 1939) was a Czech novelist, playwrite and essayist.
He was born Antonín Vančura, in Čáslav, to an old noble family of the Brethren faith. In his grammar-school years he became an anarchist. He later studied linguistics of the Czech and German languages at Prague University. After 1910, he worked as a journalist for Lidove Noviny, one of the leading Czech newspapers. In the 1920s, he became the director of Brno Municipal Library. In 1939, due to his depressions of Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, he commited suicide on May 22 in Brno.
His most important texts are the novels Kamarádi svobody (Friends of Freedom) and Mesíc (The Moon), a fantastic novel envolved by poetism , the theatre plays Mrtve moře (Dead sea), written in 1917, Janosík (Janosik), in 1910, and Generace (Generation), in 1921. He was the author of many essay books; of them Rybařská knízka (Fishermen's Book) written in 1921 is the most well-known.
Jiří Mahen was cousin of novelist Vladislav Vančura.
