E.B. White

Born Elwyn Brooks White in Mt. Vernon, New York, White began writing at an early age and was the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun during college. He wandered all over the country after graduation and worked on the Seattle Times, on an Alaskan steamer, and moped around New York for years soaking up the feel of the city and collecting rejection slips for his literary submissions. He started out at The New Yorker in 1926 assembling the "Talk of the Town" section, and as he developed as a writer he began to contribute comedic sketches, humorous essays, parodies and fables to the magazine. "He excelled in prose that was precise, elegant, idiomatic, rhythmic but brief and to the point." His third book was a parody of self-help manuals, written with James Thurber: "Is Sex Necessary?" His best known works were the children's classics "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little," and also the updated version of the manual "Elements of Style" published in 1959. Marc Connelly wrote that "It was White who brought the steel and the music to the magazine."