E.B. White

Biography

Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985) spent most of his adult life as an essayist and editor at The New Yorker. He co-authored The Elements of Style with his Cornell professor William Strunk Jr. — the most influential American usage guide ever written. White kept animals on his Maine farm, including pigs and spiders. He wrote Charlotte's Web after watching a spider build an egg sac in his barn and feeling 'the sadness of a fat pig being readied for slaughter.' He rewrote the novel eleven times. It was published when he was fifty-two — the same age Charlotte's Web was completed, as if White had needed a lifetime to find the right words for what he wanted to say about death.

E.B. White at a glance