White graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell university in 1921.
Career
Gallery of E. B. White
The logotype of the United Press (now United Press International), where White worked in 1921 and 1922.
Gallery of E. B. White
1000 Denny Way, Seattle, Washington 98109 United States
In 1922-23, White was a cub reporter for The Seattle Times.
Gallery of E. B. White
Gallery of E. B. White
Cover of the first issue of The New Yorker, where White began working in 1927.
Gallery of E. B. White
E.B. White
Gallery of E. B. White
E.B. White
Gallery of E. B. White
E.B. White at work, August 18, 1976 (Jill Krementz)
Gallery of E. B. White
White served as a columnist for Harper's Magazine from 1938 to 1943. In the picture Harper's Magazine: No.1052; January, 1938
Gallery of E. B. White
White in his twenties
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Presidential Medal of Freedom
White received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal
White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the U.S. professional children's librarians in 1970. It recognized his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature."
White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the U.S. professional children's librarians in 1970. It recognized his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature."
(Too personal for an almanac, too sophisticated for a dome...)
Too personal for an almanac, too sophisticated for a domestic history, and too funny and self-doubting for a literary journal, One Man's Meat can best be described as a primer of a countryman's lessons a timeless recounting of experience that will never go out of style.
(The classic story by E. B. White, author of the Newbery H...)
The classic story by E. B. White, author of the Newbery Honor Book Charlotte's Web and Trumpet of the Swan, about one small mouse on a very big adventure!
(Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E.B. White's stroll aro...)
Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E.B. White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures.
(Offers a collection of approximately fifty poems and thir...)
Offers a collection of approximately fifty poems and thirty-five sketches, stories, parodies, and commentary, selected by the author from a lifetime of writing.
(This box set contains paperback editions of the Newbery H...)
This box set contains paperback editions of the Newbery Honor-winning Charlotte's Web, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal-winning Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan—three beloved, timeless classics by E. B. White.
E. B. White, in full Elwyn Brooks White, was one of the most influential modern American essayists, largely through his work for The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote two children's classics and revised Strunk's The Elements of Style, widely used in college English courses.
Background
Elwyn Brooks White was born on July 11, 1899, at Mount Vernon, New York, United States. He was the youngest of six children of Samuel Tilly White, a piano manufacturer who was comfortably well off, but not wealthy, and Jessie Hart White. Elwyn had an older brother Stanley Hart White, who was a professor of landscape architecture and the inventor of the Vertical Garden.
Education
Elwyn was taught to read and to explore the natural world by Stanley Hart White, his older brother. White received his early education at local public schools in Mount Vernon. Later, he attended Cornell University where he was the editor of “The Cornell Daily Sun”. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from this university in 1921.
Later in life several honorary degrees were conferred upon White. In 1948 he received three Doctor of Letters degrees from Dartmouth College, University Maine and Yale University. The same degrees were given to him by Bowdoin College, Hamilton College and Harvard University in 1950, 1952 and 1954 respectively. The author also held Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Colby College, given in 1954.
In 1921 White was offered a teaching position at the University of Minnesota, but turned it down because his goal was to become a writer. He worked for the United Press International and the American Legion News Service in 1921 and 1922 and then became a reporter for the Seattle Times in 1922 and 1923. As he put it, he found that he was ill-suited for daily journalism, and his city editor had already reached the same conclusion, so they came to an amicable parting of the ways.
White then worked for two years with the Frank Seaman advertising agency as a production assistant and copywriter. During this time he had poems published in "The Conning Tower" of Franklin P. Adams, the newspaper columnist who helped so many talented young people achieve prominence during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925 he published the article "Defense of the Bronx River" in The New Yorker magazine, his first piece in that publication. It led to his being named a contributing editor in 1927, an association which continued until his death in 1985.
From the time of its origin, The New Yorker was one of the most prestigious periodicals in the nation. It featured such celebrities as Alexander Woolcott, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and George S. Kaufman as contributors, so White was in the company of the best when he was added to the staff. At some time he became the principal contributor to the magazine's column "Notes and Comment" and set the tone of informed, intelligent, tolerant, faintly amused urbanity in observations on the passing scene, a feature which continued after his death. A typical example is this brief note, "Barred from Barnard," written in 1929.
That same year White published a poetry collection, The Lady Is Cold, and then joined fellow New Yorker writer James Thurber in Is Sex Necessary? Freudian psychology had been enormously influential in America in the 1920s, giving rise to a spate of volumes analyzing or presenting advice on the subject. The time was ripe for a parody of such books, and these two came up with a witty, low-key work featuring passages like this.
He published Ho Hum in 1931, Another Ho Hum in 1932, Every Day Is Saturday in 1934, and in 1936, in the New Yorker, under the pseudonym Lee Strout White, the essay "Farewell My Lovely!" One of his best-known pieces, it was suggested to him by a manuscript submitted by Richard L. Strout of the Christian Science Monitor. It served as the basis for the book Farewell to the Model T, published later that same year.
White's next work was a poetry collection, The Fox of Peapack (1938), the same year that he began the monthly column "One Man's Meat" for Harper's magazine, a column which lasted five years. There followed the essay collection Quo Vadimus? in 1939; an editing job with his wife, The Subtreasury of American Humor, in 1941; and One Man's Meat, an anthology of his Harper's columns, in 1942.
In 1945 he entered a new field with great success, writing Stuart Little for children. The story of a mouse born to normal human parents was clearly intended to console young people who thought themselves different or odd, and it carried the message that Stuart's parents never batted an eye when their son turned out to be a mouse and that the hero, debonair, even jaunty, could build himself a good life.
After The Wild Flag in 1946 and Here Is New York in 1949, White returned to children's literature with his most popular book in the genre, Charlotte's Web, in 1952. The story of the bond between the young pig Wilbur and the clever spider who saves his life is a paean to the power of friendship and a reminder to young readers that death is a part of life.
The Second Tree from the Corner came in 1954. Three years later White and his wife gave up their New York apartment and moved permanently to North Brooklin, Maine. While an undergraduate at Cornell, White had taken a course with Professor William S. Strunk, Jr. Strunk used a text he had written and published at his own expense, a thin volume titled The Elements of Style. White edited it, revised it, and added the chapter "An Approach to style," offering such advice as "Place yourself in the background; do not explain too much; prefer the standard to the offbeat." The book sold widely and became a college campus fixture for the next 20 years in several editions (1959, 1972, 1979).
He also published The Points of My Compass in 1962; The Trumpet of the Swan, another children's book, in 1970; and collections of his letters (1976), essays (1977), and poems and sketches (1981).
(The classic story by E. B. White, author of the Newbery H...)
1945
Views
Quotations:
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
"Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others."
"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."
"A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."
"A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom - he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold."
"Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy."
"Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed."
"Delay is natural to a writer."
"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."
"I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book."
“But when I latch onto a book like They Live by the Wind, by Wendell P. Bradley, I am glued tight to the chair. It is because Bradley wrote about something that has always fascinated (and uplifted) me—sailing."
"I soon realized I had made no mistake in my choice of a wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, 'Put in some tooth twine.' I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me." [about his wife]
Membership
As a student E. B. White was White a member of the Aleph Samach and Quill and Dagger societies and Phi Gamma Delta ("Fiji") fraternity. In 1973 White was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also a member of National Institute Arts and Letters and a Fellow of American Academy Arts and Sciences.
Personality
Although children around the world know him as E.B. White, his friends and family called him Andy for most of his life. He got the nickname Andy when he went to college at Cornell University.
White loved animals, particularly his dog Daisy. In 1932, he even wrote an obituary for Daisy after a New York City cab hit her in front of a florist’s shop on University Place. Not surprisingly, White's three children's books all take place in a world in which animals speak and experience human emotions.
White disliked reading indoors, much preferring outdoor activities, especially sailing.
Throughout his life, White was a hypochondriac and worried that, for example, his sunburn was a brain tumor or an ant bite was fatal. In addition to his hypochondria, White suffered from a general anxiety that began in childhood. As an adult, he was anxious about subways crashing, meeting new people, and speaking in public. The author also struggled with procrastination. In an interview, he revealed that he would walk around his house, straightening picture frames and rugs, before sitting down to write.
Physical Characteristics:
Before White died in October 1985, he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
Quotes from others about the person
James Thurber, E. B. W., "Credos and Curios": "Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends."
Interests
animals
Sport & Clubs
sailing
Connections
In 1926, White met Katharine Sergeant Angell, the The New Yorker magazine's fiction editor. Six years older than White, Katharine was a divorced mother with two kids, but the couple married in 1929 and eventually moved to a farmhouse in Maine. Katharine continued to work remotely for The New Yorker, and the two were married until her death in 1977. The marriage produced one son, Joel White.
Father:
Samuel Tilly White
Mother:
Jessie Hart White
Spouse:
Katharine Sergeant Angell
stepson:
Roger Angell
Son:
Joel White
stepdaughter:
Nancy Angell Stableford
References
Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White
Sweet mixes White’s personal letters, photos, and family ephemera with her own exquisite artwork to tell the story of this American literary icon.
2016
E.B. White: A Biography
Here is a richly detailed and vivid biography of the man who wrote Charlotte’s Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, and Stuart Little; the White of “Strunk and White”; the writer whose style and humor were so important in distinguishing The New Yorker’s first thirty years. Included are some fifty photographs and drawings, as well as manuscript facsimiles.