Letters of E. B. White: Revised Edition

Michael Hayward

Nowadays the name E. B. White is prob­a­bly more famil­iar to chil­dren than to adult read­ers, thanks to his two clas­sic children’s books, Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. Those adults who do remem­ber White prob­a­bly think first of The Elements of Style (co-authored by White and William Strunk, Jr.); even today it is the bible for con­cise, lucid writ­ing. But White was much more than a gram­mat­i­cal pedant: he offered proof that his writ­ing guide­lines worked, in his fre­quent con­tri­bu­tions to Harper’s and The New Yorker from 1925 until his death in 1985. Many of those won­der­ful essays — humane and humor­ous, insight­ful and poetic — were later pub­lished in book form, but few read­ers now take the time to track them down; it is their loss. White was also a pro­lific cor­re­spon­dent, as the Letters of E. B. White: Revised Edition (HarperCollins) shows: over 700 pages, indexed and foot­noted, updated from the first edi­tion with let­ters from 1976 to 1985. A fore­word by John Updike sum­ma­rizes White’s life and notes the main cor­re­spon­dents, who include White’s brother Stanley, his wife Katharine (fic­tion edi­tor at The New Yorker) and the humourist James Thurber. This col­lec­tion is the clos­est White came to writ­ing an auto­bi­og­ra­phy, and it reveals why he was one of the most beloved writ­ers of his day.