E.B. White, James Thurber, and Their World, Including Roger Angell
Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985), forever known and loved as E.B. White, was first known and admired by me when in grade school I read Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. As a high schooler I was committed as a fan by his essays, especially The Second Tree from the Corner and One Man’s Meat. (Meanwhile, James Thurber, White’s friend and colleague at the New Yorker, had me laughing out loud while reading My Life and Hard Times.) At the beginning of my new-book-selling career, the book store I worked in received remaindered copies of White’s Letters, which forever elevated him as an ideal for me.
White is good company. If you know him only as a children’s book writer, read his poetry (often sidelined as “light verse”). Everyone should read some of his essays, especially a classic like “Death of a Pig.” Or dip into his letters, especially any mentioning Fred the Dachshund or any dealing with disapproving or uncomprehending adults and the serious themes of Charlotte’s Web. And you may have been intimidated by The Elements of Style, the book he took up from his old professor at Cornell University, but you would be pleasantly surprised if you read it for a refresher and for entertainment.
On this page I include James Thurber’s works, ever immortal, and White’s stepson, Roger Angell, with whom he was close and who often acted as a custodian of White’s posthumous fame and legacy.
Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith
Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith
During the 1950s and '60s, writers E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith carried on a long correspondence by letter, despite living only a few miles apart on the coast of Maine. Often the letters were written from one or the other while they were traveling, but missing their homes and friends. The letters represent a witty and charming correspondence between two literary giants, their stories of Maine, the beauty of our region, and the trials and tribulations of living here. Introduced by White's granddaughter, Martha White, the letters show their first formal communications, their chummy middle years, right up to the death of Edmund Ware Smith. Throughout, there is a strong sense of place and community.