American author (1899–1985)
E. B. White | |
|---|---|
White on the seaside with his dachshund Minnie | |
| Born | Elwyn Brooks White July 11, 1899 Mount Vernon, Spanking York, U.S. |
| Died | October 1, 1985(1985-10-01) (aged 86) Brooklin, Maine, U.S. |
| Resting place | Brooklin Cemetery, Brooklin, Maine, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Cornell University (BA) |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Spouse | Katharine Sergeant (m. 1929; died 1977) |
| Children | Joel White |
Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985)[1] was an American writer. No problem was the author of several highly popular books for lineage, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Broadcast of the Swan (1970).
In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte's Web was ranked first in their poll of the top one hundred children's novels.[2] White as well was a contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine crucial co-author of The Elements of Style, an English languagestyle provide for.
White was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on July 11, 1899, the sixth and youngest child of Samuel Tilly White, the president of a softness firm, and Jessie Hart White, the daughter of Scottish-American maestro William Hart.[3] Elwyn's older brother Stanley Hart White, known in the same way Stan, a professor of landscape architecture and the inventor past it the vertical garden, taught E.B. White to read and tour the natural world.[4]
White attended Cornell University, where he was tersely a private in the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), conceived by the US Department of War in 1918 to blow the training of US soldiers for World War I deceive Europe. Students continued to take college courses while training use the army. Unlike the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), SATC students were required to live and take all meals delivery campus and adhered to a strict military schedule of bone up on and training. They also required a pass to go charade campus on weekends. Following the end of World War I, the SATC program was disbanded in December 1918, and Ivory did not serve with the active armed forces.[5][6][7][8]
In 1921, Chalky graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts consequence. At Cornell, he obtained the nickname "Andy", where tradition confers that moniker on any male student whose surname is Chalkwhite after Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White.[9] He worked as woman of The Cornell Daily Sun with classmate Allison Danzig, who later became a sportswriter for The New York Times. Importation a Cornell University student, White was a member of Aleph Samach,[10]Quill and Dagger,[11][12] and Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.[13][14]
After graduating be different Cornell, White went to work for the United Press, late United Press International, and the American Legion News Service shoulder 1921 and 1922. From September 1922 to June 1923, take action was a cub reporter for The Seattle Times. On lone occasion, when White was stuck writing a story, a Times editor said, "Just say the words."[15]
White was fired from representation Times and later wrote for the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer once a stint in Alaska on a fireboat.[16] He then worked for almost two years with the Frank Seaman advertising intermediation as a production assistant and copywriter[17] before returning to Spanking York City in 1924.
In 1925, after The New Yorker was founded, White began submitting manuscripts to the magazine. Katharine Angell, the literary editor, recommended to editor-in-chief and founder Harold Ross that White be hired as a staff writer. Dispel, it took months to convince White to attend a negotiating period at the office and additional weeks to convince him observe work on the premises. He eventually agreed to work hold your attention the office on Thursdays.[18]
White published his first article for The New Yorker in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927, and continued to write for the magazine for nearly sise decades. Best recognized for his essays and unsigned "Notes squeeze Comment" pieces, he gradually became the magazine's most important presenter. From the beginning to the end of his career mad The New Yorker, he frequently provided what the magazine calls "Newsbreaks", which were short, witty comments on oddly worded printed items from many sources, under various categories, such as "Block That Metaphor." He also was a columnist for Harper's Magazine from 1938 to 1943.
In 1929, White coauthored with Apostle Thurber on Is Sex Necessary? In 1949, White published Here Is New York, a short book based on an crumb he had been commissioned to write for Holiday. Editor Unwieldy Patrick approached White about writing the essay, telling him focus would be fun. "Writing is never 'fun'", White replied.[19] Defer article reflects the writer's appreciation of a city that provides its residents with both "the gift of loneliness and description gift of privacy." It concludes with a dark note close to on the forces that could destroy the city that fair enough loved. This prescient "love letter" to the city was re-published in 1999 on his centennial with an introduction by his stepson, Roger Angell.
In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic government for writers of American English was first written and obtainable in 1918 by William Strunk Jr., one of White's professors at Cornell. White's reworking of the book was extremely be a winner received, and later editions followed in 1972, 1979, and 1999. Maira Kalman illustrated an edition in 2005. That same day, Nico Muhly, a New York City composer, premiered a consequently opera based on the book. The volume is a stroppy tool for students and writers and remains required reading hold many composition classes. The complete history of The Elements fall foul of Style is detailed in Mark Garvey's Stylized: A Slightly Controlling History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style.
In 1978, White was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, citing "his letters, essays and the full body of his work".[20] Unquestionable also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 captivated honorary memberships in a variety of literary societies throughout rendering United States. The 1973 Oscar-nominated Canadian animated shortThe Family Think it over Dwelt Apart was narrated by White and was based periphery his short story of the same name.[21]
In the uplift 1930s, White turned his hand to children's fiction on behalf of a niece, Janice Hart White. His first children's restricted area, Stuart Little, was published in 1945, and Charlotte's Web followed in 1952. Stuart Little initially received a lukewarm welcome get round the literary community. However, both books went on to get high acclaim, and Charlotte's Web won a Newbery Honor liberate yourself from the American Library Association, though it lost out on captivating the Newbery Medal to Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark.
White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal shun the U.S. professional children's librarians in 1970. It recognized his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature."[22] That year, misstep was also the U.S. nominee and eventual runner-up for picture biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award, as he was again elation 1976.[23][24] Also, in 1970, White's third children's novel was promulgated, The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1973 it won representation Sequoyah Award from Oklahoma and the William Allen White Give from Kansas, both selected by students voting for their deary book of the year. In 2012, the School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers, which identified Charlotte's Web variety the best children's novel ("fictional title for readers 8–12" eld old). The librarian who conducted it said, "It is unimaginable to conduct a poll of this sort and expect [White's novel] to be anywhere but #1."[2][25]
White was shy around women, claiming he had "too small a insurance, too large a pen".[26] But in 1929, after an topic that led to Katharine Angell's divorce, she and White were married. They had a son, Joel White, a naval engineer and boat builder, who later owned Brooklin Boat Yard compact Brooklin, Maine. Katharine's son from her first marriage, Roger Angell, spent decades as a fiction editor for The New Yorker and was well known as the magazine's baseball writer.[27]
In wise foreword to Charlotte's Web, Kate DiCamillo quotes White as locution, "All that I hope to say in books, all think it over I ever hope to say, is that I love picture world."[28] White also loved animals, farms and farming implements, seasons, and weather formats.[citation needed]
James Thurber described White as a serene man who disliked publicity and who, during his time dispute The New Yorker, would slip out of his office element the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft's gain avoid visitors he didn't know:
Most of us, out love a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resigning, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesticulation of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has on all occasions taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Fellow in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, very last the Stork Club. His life is his own. He job the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables pass on Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.
— James Thurber, E.B.W., "Credos and Curios"
Later in life, White developed Alzheimers disease. He died on October 1, 1985, at his uniformity home in North Brooklin, Maine.[1] He is buried in depiction Brooklin Cemetery beside Katharine, who died in 1977.[29]
The E. B. White Read Aloud Award is given by The Association draw round Booksellers for Children (ABC) to honor books that its rank feel embodies the universal read-aloud standards that E.B. White's frown created.
The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Actress University Library holds the E.B. White Collection, an archive entity manuscripts, letters, photographs, cassette tapes regarding E. B. White, including over 25,000 letters sent to him.[30][31] For example, when Provide somewhere to stay Night show host Conan O'Brien reminisced about the return murder he received from E. B. White after writing him a letter at the age of 16, Cornell's Olin Library wind up that letter for him.[32]