E.B. White had a strong love of animals. He once said, “Animals are a weakness for me.” So, it’s no surprise that his devotion would find its way into his writing. In 1932, he published a witty, heartfelt obituary in The New Yorker for his dog Daisy, who died after being hit by a Yellow Cab. You can read it here. [1]
Elwyn Brooks White was born in New York on this day in 1899, the 6th child of piano manufacturer, Samuel Tilly White, and Jessie Hart. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970).
After graduating from Cornell University, New York, in 1921 he worked as a reporter and freelance writer before joining The New Yorker magazine as a writer and contributing editor in 1927, an association that continued until his death. White’s essays quickly garnered critical praise, and he also wrote poems, cartoon captions, and brief sketches. In 1926, he met Katharine Sergeant Angell, the 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.
In 1945 White published his first children’s story, Stuart Little about a mouse born to normal human parents. His best-known work, Charlotte’s Web was published in 1952. In addition, he was co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style, a book that teaches people how to write effectively, clearly, and succinctly.
In 1973, animation studio Hanna-Barbera released a film version of Charlotte’s Web. The studio wanted to change the book’s ending by not having Charlotte die, but White pushed back and it was left unaltered. White and his wife reportedly hated the animated Charlotte’s Web, regretting that it was made and calling it a travesty.
E.B. White authored over seventeen books of prose and poetry and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973, and won countless other awards including a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 1978. Later in life, he contracted Alzheimer’s disease and died aged 86 on 1 October 1985, at his farm home in North Brooklin, Maine. He is buried in the Brooklin Cemetery beside Katharine, who died in 1977.