"It's broccoli, dear." "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
Caption for a cartoon by Carl Rose|Carl Rose in The New Yorker (8 December 1928)
Commuter — one who spends his lifeIn riding to and from his wife;A man who shaves and takes a trainAnd then rides back to shave again.
"Commuter," The Lady Is Cold (1929)
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.
Letter to Stanley Hart White (January 1929)
Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph (Hebrew Bible)|Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.
"Truth in Advertising," The New Yorker (1936-07-11)
Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
"The Old and the New," The New Yorker (1937-06-19)
image:Frog01.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.
"How to Tell a Major Poet from a Minor Poet" in The New Yorker (1938); reprinted in Quo Vadimus: Or, the Case for the Bicycle (1939)
Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
"Some Remarks on Humor," preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)
Elwyn Brooks White usually known as
E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular
Charlotte's WebCharlotte's Web is an award-winning children's novel by acclaimed American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte. The book was first published in 1952, with illustrations by Garth Williams.The novel tells the story...
and
Stuart LittleStuart Little is a 1945 children's novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children...
, and co-authored a widely used writing guide,
The Elements of StyleThe Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
, popularly known by its authors' names, as "Strunk & White."
Personal life
White was born in Albany, New York, the youngest child of Samuel Johnson, a piano manufacturer, and Jessie Hart. He served in the army before going on to college. White graduated from
Cornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
with a
Bachelor of ArtsA Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree in 1923. 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 WhiteAndrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
. While at Cornell, he worked as editor of
The Cornell Daily SunThe Cornell Daily Sun is an independent daily newspaper published in Ithaca, New York by students at Cornell University. It is the oldest independent college daily in the United States....
with classmate
Allison DanzigAllison "Al" Danzig was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis, but also covered college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing. Danzig was the only American sportwriter to extensively cover real tennis, the precursor to modern lawn tennis.Danzig covered every...
who later became a sportswriter for
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. White was also a member of the
Aleph Samach The Aleph Samach is a junior honor society at Cornell University, founded in 1893 on four pillars: leadership, loyalty, service, and honor. Unlike most collegiate secret societies, which have primarily senior membership, The Aleph Samach is composed mostly of juniors...
and
Quill and DaggerQuill and Dagger is a senior honor society at Cornell University. It is often recognized as one of the most prominent collegiate societies of its type, along with Skull and Bones of Yale University...
societies and
Phi Gamma DeltaThe international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta is a collegiate social fraternity with 120 chapters and 18 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and its headquarters are located in Lexington, Kentucky, USA...
(FIJI). He wrote for
The Seattle TimesThe Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
and
Seattle Post-IntelligencerThe Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
and worked in an advertising agency before returning to New York City in 1924. Not long after
The New Yorker was founded in 1925, White would submit manuscripts to it.
Katharine AngellKatharine Sergeant Angell White was a writer and the fiction editor for The New Yorker magazine from 1925 to 1960...
, the literary editor, recommended to magazine editor and founder
Harold RossHarold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
that White be taken on as staff. However, it took months to convince him to come to a meeting at the office, and further weeks to convince him to agree to work on the premises. Eventually he agreed to work in the office on Thursdays.
A few years later in 1929, White and Angell were married. They had a son,
Joel WhiteJoel White , the son of author E. B. White and New Yorker Magazine editor Katharine Sergeant Angell White, was a renowned U.S. naval architect known for his classic and beautiful designs including the W-Class of boats. Two W boats were posthumously built by Rockport Marine and Brooklin Boat Yard...
, a naval architect and boatbuilder, who owned Brooklin Boatyard in Brooklin, Maine. Katharine's son from her first marriage,
Roger AngellRoger Angell is an American essayist. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years...
, has spent decades as a fiction editor for
The New Yorker and is well known as the magazine's baseball writer.
James ThurberJames Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
described White as being a quiet man, disliking publicity, who during his time at
The New Yorker would slip out of his office via the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft's to avoid visitors whom he didn't know.
White died from
Alzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
on October 1, 1985, at his
farm homeThe E. B. White House is located in Brooklin, Maine, United States. Author E. B. White did not advertise its location while he was alive, enjoying his privacy. In 1977, he convinced an interviewer to report that "he lives in 'a New England coastal town', somewhere between Nova Scotia and Cuba"...
in North Brooklin, Maine. He is buried in the Brooklin Cemetery beside his wife Katharine, who died in 1977.
Career
He published his first article in
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927 and continued to contribute for around six decades. Best recognized for his essays and unsigned "Notes and Comment" pieces, he gradually became the most important contributor to
The New Yorker at a time when it was arguably the most important American literary magazine. From the beginning to the end of his career at the
New Yorker he frequently provided what the magazine calls "Newsbreaks", these being short, witty comments on oddly-worded printed items from many sources, under various categories such as "Block That Metaphor." He also served as a columnist for
Harper's MagazineHarper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
from 1938 to 1943.
In the late 1930s, White turned his hand to
children's fictionChildren's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
on behalf of a niece, Janice Hart White. His first children's book,
Stuart LittleStuart Little is a 1945 children's novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children...
, was published in 1945, and
Charlotte's WebCharlotte's Web is an award-winning children's novel by acclaimed American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte. The book was first published in 1952, with illustrations by Garth Williams.The novel tells the story...
appeared in 1952.
Stuart Little received a lukewarm welcome from the literary community at first, due in part 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 MedalThe Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal is a prize awarded by the American Library Association to writers or illustrators of children's books published in the United States who have over a period of years made substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature...
, a major prize in the field of children's literature. In the same year, White published his third children's novel,
The Trumpet of the SwanThe Trumpet of the Swan is a children's novel by E.B. White published in 1970. It tells the story of Louis, a Trumpeter Swan born without a voice and trying to overcome it by learning to play a trumpet, always trying to impress a beautiful pen named Serena.-Plot summary:In Canada in the spring of...
. In 1973, that book received the Sequoyah Award from Oklahoma and the William Allen White Award from Kansas, both of which were awarded by students voting for their favorite book of the year.
In 1949, White published
Here Is New York, a short book based upon a
HolidayHoliday was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977. Originally published by the Curtis Publishing Company, Holidays circulation grew to over one million subscribers at its height....
magazine article that he had been asked to write. The article reflects the writer's appreciation of a city that provides its residents with both "the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy," and concludes with a dark note touching upon the forces that may destroy the city that the writer loves. This prescient "love letter" to the city was re-published in 1999 on the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth, with an introduction by his stepson,
Roger AngellRoger Angell is an American essayist. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years...
.
In 1959, White edited and updated
The Elements of StyleThe Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic guidance for writers of
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
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. The illustrator,
Maira KalmanMaira Kalman, born in 1949, is an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer. Born in Tel Aviv, Kalman came to New York City with her family at age 4. She attended the High School of Music and Art, now LaGuardia High School....
, is a contributor to the New Yorker. That same year, a New York composer named
Nico MuhlyNico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
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. The complete history of
The Elements of StyleThe Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
is detailed in Mark Garvey's
Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style.
In 1978, White won an honorary
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for his work as a whole. Other awards he received included a
Presidential Medal of FreedomThe Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
in 1963 and memberships in a variety of literary societies throughout the United States.
The 1973 Canadian animated short,
The Family That Dwelt Apart, is based on his short story of the same name, and is narrated by White.
Books
- The Lady is Cold - Poems by E.B.W. (1929)
- Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (1929, with James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
)
- Subtreasury of American Humor
Subtreasury of American Humor is a 1941 anthology edited by E. B. White and Katharine White, of contemporary United States humor writers. Both editors were long-time contributors of The New Yorker, and the collection has been sometimes termed as "the New Yorker school of American Humor." Kurt...
(1941)
- One Man's Meat (1942)
- The Wild Flag (1943)
- Stuart Little
Stuart Little is a 1945 children's novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children...
(1945)
- Here Is New York (1949)
- Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web is an award-winning children's novel by acclaimed American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte. The book was first published in 1952, with illustrations by Garth Williams.The novel tells the story...
(1952)
- The Second Tree From The Corner (1954)
- The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
(with William Strunk, Jr.) (1959, republished 1972, 1979, 1999, 2005)
- The Trumpet of the Swan
The Trumpet of the Swan is a children's novel by E.B. White published in 1970. It tells the story of Louis, a Trumpeter Swan born without a voice and trying to overcome it by learning to play a trumpet, always trying to impress a beautiful pen named Serena.-Plot summary:In Canada in the spring of...
(1973)
- Letters of E.B. White (1976)
- Essays of E.B. White (1977)
- Poems and Sketches of E.B. White (1981)
- Writings from "The New Yorker" (1990)
- (2011)
External links