E. B. White

Elwyn Brooks White, known to readers as E. B. White, was an American writer, essayist, and longtime contributing editor for The New Yorker. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on July 11, 1899, the youngest of six children of Samuel Tilly White, president of a piano firm, and Jessie Hart White, daughter of the Scottish-American painter William Hart. He died on October 1, 1985, after a writing life that stretched across much of the twentieth century.

White’s early life joined books, family, and close attention to the natural world. His older brother Stanley Hart White, a professor and inventor of the vertical garden, taught him to read and to explore outdoors. White attended Cornell University, where he briefly joined the Student Army Training Corps during World War I but did not serve with the active armed forces. He graduated in 1921 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, earned the nickname “Andy,” and worked on The Cornell Daily Sun with Allison Danzig, later a sportswriter for The New York Times.

After Cornell, White worked for the United Press and the American Legion News Service, then became a cub reporter for The Seattle Times from 1922 to 1923. When he was stuck on a story, an editor told him, “Just say the words,” a plain instruction that fits much of what made his prose admired. He also wrote for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, worked on a fireboat in Alaska, and spent nearly two years in advertising before returning to New York City in 1924.

In 1925, White began submitting work to the newly founded The New Yorker. Literary editor Katharine Angell recommended him to Harold Ross, and after some persuading White joined the staff in 1927. He wrote for the magazine for nearly six decades, becoming best recognized for essays, unsigned “Notes and Comment” pieces, and short comic “Newsbreaks” on oddly worded printed items. In his essays he argued for limited government, civil rights, and world federalism. He also wrote a column for Harper’s Magazine from 1938 to 1943.

White’s best-known books reached both adults and children. With James Thurber he coauthored Is Sex Necessary? in 1929. His Here Is New York, published in 1949, grew from an article for Holiday and described a city that gave residents “the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” In 1959 he edited and updated William Strunk Jr.’s The Elements of Style, which became a standard guide for students and writers. For children he wrote Stuart Little in 1945, Charlotte’s Web in 1952, and The Trumpet of the Swan in 1970. Charlotte’s Web won a Newbery Honor, and in a 2012 School Library Journal reader survey it ranked first among the top one hundred children’s novels.

Honors followed, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1970, and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for “his letters, essays and the full body of his work.” Kurt Vonnegut called him “one of the most admirable prose stylists our country has so far produced.” Readers still return to White because his sentences are clear without being cold, witty without strain, and gentle without losing their bite. He wrote about cities, animals, grammar, freedom, and ordinary printed oddities with the same rare gift: he simply said the words.