E B White (1899 - 1985)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Children's Literature

Born in Mt. Vernon NY but a Brooklin resident for some years (and a summer resident in childhood of Belgrade, Maine), 'Andy' White wrote for many years for The New Yorker magazine. He is also known as the author of the children's classics Charlotte's Web (1952; chapter one of Charlotte's Web), which was set in Brooklin and at the Blue Hill Fair, and Stuart Little (1945; made into a feature movie in 1999; chapter one of Stuart Little), which together won the 1970 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). White also wrote a book of essays on Maine life, One Man's Meat (1942), from columns originally written for Harper's magazine.

Additional works include:

• Ho-Hum: Newsbreaks from the New Yorker (1931)
• The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities (1931)
• Everyday is Saturday (1934)
• Quo vadimus?, or, The Case for the Bicycle (1939)
• The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters (1946)
• Here is New York (1949)
• Is Sex Necessary, or Why Do You Feel the Way You Do? (1950)
• The Second Tree from the Corner (1954; essays)
• The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, and the South (1962; review of Points in the New York Times)
• An E. B. White Reader (1966)
• the introduction, revisions, and a chapter on writing in Strunk's The Elements of Style (1972)
• The Letters of E. B. White (1976; ed. by Dorothy L. Guth; 2006, revised, with newly released letters from 1976-1985, additional photographs, and a foreword by John Updike)
• The Essays of E. B. White (1977)
• Poems and Sketches of E. B. White (1981)
• Writings from the New Yorker, 1927-1976 (1990)

White and his wife Katharine also edited A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941).

The library has a copy of the chidren's book E. B. White: Some Writer, by Beverly Ghermac (1992) and for adults, Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White, by Linda H. Davis (1989). For more information on White, the New York Times provides a wonderful Life & Times section on White, which includes links to, among others, a Sept. 1977 article entitled 'Appreciating E.B. White,' and an Aug. 1997 New York Times' adaptation of Roger Angell's introduction to a recent edition of One Man's Meat; Angell is White's stepson and in this article he calls One Man's Meat the making of White as a writer. The Kuusankoski Public Library (Finland) also provides a White biography. Some biographical information on Katharine (1892-1977) -- whose garden in Brooklin was the focus of her book of essays, Onward and Upward in the Garden (read some of it online here) and of a collection of correspondence between White and Elizabeth Lawrence in Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters -- is also available online. EB White's reflections on 'Life Without Katharine' (1980) is available through the NYT.

Maine's Friend Memorial Library (Brooklin) holds a collection of his works and Katharine's. E.B. White (Robert L. Root, Jr.; Univ. of Iowa Press) is a 1999 book about White's development as an essayist.

White died on 1 Oct. 1985.

Last Update: 06/03/2007

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