Elwyn Brooks "E.B." White
Elwyn Brooks "E.B." White (July 11,1899 - October 1,1985)[1] was an American writer,best known as the author of children's books Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little,and as the co-author of the widely used language guide The Elements of Style.
Biography
Early life and career
E.B.White graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1921.He picked up the nickname "Andy" at Cornell,where tradition confers that moniker on any male student surnamed White,after Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White.While at Cornell,he worked as editor of The Cornell Daily Sun with classmate Allison Danzig who later became a sportswriter for The New York Times.White was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society and Phi Gamma Delta (FIJI).He wrote for The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,and worked for an advertising agency before returning to New York City in 1924.
He published his first article in The New Yorker magazine in 1925,then joined the staff in 1927 and continued to contribute for six decades.Best recognized for his essays and unsigned "Notes and Comment" pieces,he gradually became one of the most important contributors to The New Yorker at a time when it was arguably the most important American literary magazine.He also served as a columnist for Harper's Magazine from 1938 to 1943.He excelled as a writer of light verse,as can be sampled in his "The Fox of Peapack and Other Poems" in 1928.
Children's books and Elements of Style
In the late 1930s,White turned his hand to children's fiction on behalf of a niece,Janice Hart White.His first child's book,Stuart Little,was published in 1945,and Charlotte's Web appeared in 1952.Stuart Little received a lukewarm welcome from the literary community at first,due in part[citation needed] to the reluctance to endorse it by Anne Carroll Moore,the retired but still powerful children's librarian from the New York Public Library.However,both went on to receive high acclaim,and in 1970 jointly won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal.That same year,he published his third children's novel,The Trumpet of the Swan,which in 1973 received the Sequoyah Award[citation needed] from Oklahoma and the William Allen White Award[citation needed] from Kansas,both of which were awarded by students voting for their favorite book of the year.
In 1959,White edited and updated The Elements of Style.This handbook of grammar and language style for writers of American English had been written and published in 1918 by William Strunk,Jr.,one of White's professors at Cornell.White's rework of the book was extremely well received,and further editions of the work followed in 1972,1979,and 1999; an illustrated edition followed in 2005.That same year,a New York composer named Nico Muhly premiered a short opera based on the book.The volume is a standard tool for students and writers and remains required reading in many composition classes.
Family and later life
White married Katharine Sergeant Angell in 1929.Angell was also an editor at The New Yorker,and the author (as Katharine White) of Onward and Upward in the Garden.They had a son,Joel White,a naval architect and boat builder,who owned Brooklin Boatyard in Brooklin,Maine.Katharine's son from her first marriage,Roger Angell,has spent decades as a fiction editor for The New Yorker and is well-known as the magazine's baseball writer.White was related to James White who was a Methodist preacher in Missouri.
White died on October 1,1985,at his farm home in North Brooklin,Maine.He was buried beside his wife at the Brooklin Cemetery.[2]
Awards
In 1978,White won an honorary Pulitzer Prize for his work as a whole.Other awards he received included a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and memberships in a variety of literary societies throughout the United States.