E.B. White: A Study of His Life and Writing Advice

Charlotte’s Web is a dearly beloved childhood classic, and many of us have fond memories of reading it for the first time or of our parents reading it to us. But how much do you know about E.B. White, the man who wrote this beautiful, gentle story?

It’s never not the right time to dive into the wonderful man who was E.B. White. In addition to Charlotte’s Web, he also wrote Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. Let’s discover the life and the writing methods of someone who influenced generations of children, whose claim to fame is igniting millions of young imaginations with his stories.

The Life of E.B. White

Elwyn Brooks White was born on July 11, 1899, in Mount Vernon, New York. According to this page from Biography, he didn’t like the name Elwyn, complaining that his mother “hung it on me because she'd run out of names.” Elwyn was the sixth child, so perhaps he was onto something with that light-hearted complaint. Because he grew up with so many siblings, he described his family as a “kingdom unto ourselves.”

White’s childhood was happy and idyllic, almost in a mirror of the books he would later go on to write. His father would recite limericks at the dinner table and invite his children to invent the last lines. Such a cheerful father figure being a part of his kids’ lives and encouraging their creativity and connection with him and one another speaks volumes. White also had a dog named Mac who would meet him at the same spot every day after school so he could walk with White back home. In his collection of essays called One Man’s Meat, White reflected that his dog walking him home with such loyalty and consistency seemed like a service the dog “thought up himself,” adding that “a boy doesn’t forget that sort of association.”

From the very beginning, White was surrounded by animals, and this grew into a tremendous lifelong love, as evidenced in this heartfelt article by Kelly Keller. She describes him as a fearful child who didn’t like school and instead was happier in the “quiet companionship of animals,” and who kept chicks, lizards and pigeons. Roger K. Miller from The Seattle Times documents how White wrote about himself, describing himself as someone who always “felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people.” Miller quotes Michale Sims’ book on the author, for Sims wrote that White’s life was “plagued by wild fantasies and indefinable nostalgia” and a “vague sense of yearning and loss.” Years later, in order to flee from the complexities of adult life, he “hid behind animals.” They were a comfort, a shield and a dear source of companionship throughout his entire life.

Melissa Sweet has written a biography of E.B. White called Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White, and this article by Sue Corbett documents the immense process. Sweet found a bit of insight into White’s childhood as described by the author himself. He would often write about his youth and once stated, “If an unhappy childhood is indispensable for a writer, I am ill-equipped: I missed out on all that.”  

However, if growing up with six siblings sounds chaotic, you’re right—he also admitted that being part of such a big family could feel isolating. He began writing at a young age—“long before I went into long pants,” as he says—and used writing to collect his thoughts and relieve his uneasiness. Keller’s article states that he journaled daily. When he was eight, he won a prize for a poem he wrote.  

Corbett writes that the biggest crisis of White’s childhood was allergies (and as a result he dealt with lifelong anxieties about the state of his health.) He was allergic to pollen, so a doctor prescribed him the following cure: to dunk his head into freezing cold water every morning. This cure ended up producing “a life-changing benefit,” according to Corbett, because White’s father, who had recently visited his older sons who were at a summer camp in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, thought the clean air and cold water there might be beneficial to young Elwyn. And so, it quickly became a tradition for the family to spend August up in Maine—which is where he’d eventually get the idea for Charlotte’s Web.

White attended Cornell University, and it was there he could finally leave the name Elwyn behind and answer to a name he much preferred: Andy.  Corbett writes the nickname was a moniker “he would gladly answer to for the rest of his life.” This piece about E.B. White states that the first president of Cornell was named Andrew White; as such tradition began that any student with the last name of White would receive the nickname Andy. And so Elwyn White gladly became Andy White.

Andy worked as the editor of the college newspaper and became friends with William Strunk, who wrote The Elements of Style, a foundational book later updated by White in 1959—and today, it’s still regarded as one of the best manuals for written English. According to this Britannica article, the essays White wrote for The New Yorker gained critical praise right away; he wrote in a personal and direct style that displayed the “affable sense of humor” he was known for. He also contributed to the magazine by writing poems, creating captions for cartoons and making brief sketches. Overall, his contributions to The New Yorker “helped establish its intellectual and cosmopolitan tone.”

White graduated from Cornell in 1921, and after that, he went on to various writing jobs. For the next six years, he wrote for United Press, American Legion News Service and The Seattle Times. The Britannica article documents that he worked for The New Yorker as a writer and contributing editor in 1927. Corbett writes that he became known for “his devilish sense of humor.” This was the publication White would end up happily working at for the rest of his life—and it’s also where he met the love of his life, Katharine.

The Stories of E.B. White

E.B. White is best known for writing Charlotte’s Web—but his first novel was 1945’s Stuart Little, the tale of a human family with a brave talking mouse for a brother. He also wrote The Trumpet of the Swan, which documents the adventures of a mute swan, in 1970. They’ve all been turned into movies, and the books are considered beloved childhood classics.

White got the idea for Charlottle’s Web from various sources. White was at his farm in Maine with his wife and family in the late 1930s when he saw a spider spinning an egg sac in the barn, according to the Biography article. That caused the cogs of his imagination to begin turning. Miller’s article describes that White had an “inveterate curiosity” which led him to begin studying spiders. An early inspiration for Charlotte was a famous cockroach character named Archy, invented by newspaper columnist Don Marquis. Miller writes that White was attracted to Archy’s wit—and of course, both Archy and Charlottle fit “into the literary tradition of talking animals that had beguiled [White] since childhood.”

White’s own morality played into the creation of the famous story, as well. Kerry Madden documents a letter White wrote that says: “One day when I was on my way to feed the pig, I began feeling sorry for the pig because, like most pigs, he was doomed to die. This made me sad. So, I started thinking of ways to save a pig's life.” He combined his feelings with the sight of the spider spinning the egg sac and a year’s worth of researching spiders to create one of the most beloved children’s books ever written. It took him three years. “I discovered, quite by accident,” he is documented as saying in this 2011 WBUR article, “that reality and fantasy make good bedfellows.” He also wrote the following inspiration to another student: “Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself.”

Funnily enough, Madden continues to write, in the “lovingly rendered” biography of White by Michael Sims—The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic—Sims writes that White never believed any book he wrote was going to sell. He provided space in his barn to store unsold copies of Stuart Little, and of course, the storage was never needed.

“Animals are a weakness with me,” White once said, which is, according to Miller, a statement acted out in his life and writing, and that, when White began to write Charlotte’s Web, “he was to a large extent writing about himself.”

The Influence of E.B. White

White’s influence can be perfectly summarized in the introduction of Michael Sims’ biography on the cherished children’s author. The introduction is fittingly called “Translating Yourself.” White’s stories became deeply adored by so many because he poured his heart and innermost feelings about his love for animals onto the page. Sims writes that “E.B. White lives in our culture dialogue,” declaring the charming tale of the pig and the spider is better known than Moby-Dick or Huckleberry Finn and is “described as ‘beloved.’”

The book even outsells another classic, the story of Winnie-the-Pooh, and in a poll consisting of librarians, teachers, publishers and authors, they all put Charlotte’s Web “firmly” in first place. Sims writes that a survey from 2000 listed Charlotte’s Web “as the bestselling children’s book in U.S. history,” with White’s other children’s books also having spots on that list.

Charlotte’s Web has been translated into 35 languages as of 2010. Furthermore, Sims writes in a beautiful statement that, “every day somewhere in the world, countless children and adults are opening the book and turning to the first page and reading in English or Norwegian or Chinese or braille.” This testament demonstrates the wonderful power of White’s stories and how their appeal transcends countries and cultures.

The Legacy of E.B. White

This article by Jonathan Yardley is a painful yet beautiful piece that honors White after he died in 1985. It has some of the most touching sentiments about him and his legacy. “His sly, self-deprecating voice speaks more forcefully than ever,” Yardley writes, as White’s books have sold over 50 million copies in the past half-century. Yet, continues Yardley, “unlike the authors of most children's books, E.B. White is not a writer to be discarded once we slip out of childhood.”

White’s essays for adults, such as “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” is a “startling meditation on morality.” Furthermore, his revision of The Elements of Style is much used and still “underlined by students,” in the words of Sims, and Richard Nordquist writes “it’s on our [website’s] short list of essential Reference Works for Writers.”  Bobby Powers writes that his revision of Strunk’s original writing manual made both of them “the dynamic duo of the writing world.”

Yardley’s piece honoring White says it best. Although he hardly published anything in the last years of his life, “[White’s death] seemed less a departure than a reappearance, a final reminder that he had been there all along and that we had missed him.” White is nothing less than a spectacular writer and a gentle, kind soul, and his fame can be traced back to the fact that he knew “full well that his gift was not for the large and cosmic but for the miniature and intimate.” He created one of the best legacies the world has ever seen by transcribing his beliefs and loves onto paper.

The Writing Advice of E.B. White

According to Miller’s article, Sims writes that E.B. White “added and subtracted, tried this and deleted that.” White believed writing should have “directness and honesty,” and that those two things were the most important elements a story could have—that they would “carry the day.” This is one of the best elements you can put into your writing: what you truly believe in. When a message in a story comes from the heart, it will be enduring due to a righteous foundation.

The first line of Charlotte’s Web—“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”—showcases a firm grip on how to engage readers immediately. It’s a classic line for a reason. It’s a question, thereby raising that same question within the reader’s mind, but more importantly White asserts his morality and the tone of the book with a mere six words. It encapsulates the theme of his work, the “overall...joy of being alive.” Sims has stated in Miller’s article that Charlotte’s Web is a “summary of what it felt like to be E.B. White,” and that the story “preserved in amber his response to the world.”  

Richard Nordquist’s article documents a letter that White wrote to a 17-year-old fan, and his view on how to be a good writer is crystalized within, in his own wise and charming voice: “If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not ‘plotted’—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, ‘Who cares?’ Everybody cares.”

It is kind and encouraging, even all these years later. He goes on to say in another letter: “It is my belief that no writer can improve his work until he discards the dulcet notion that the reader is feebleminded, for writing is an act of faith, not of grammar. Ascent is at the heart of the matter.”

E.B. White was a gentle and kind man who believed in the power of goodness. He approached storytelling with a careful attitude and loving attention to detail. The next time you sit down to write, think about E.B. White. He truly took his time when he wrote and respected the craft of writing. He wrote from what he knew and what he wished to know. When he wanted to write a story about a pig and a spider, he realized he knew nothing about spiders—so he researched them for a whole year. And underneath that research and endless curiosity was his foundational moral outlook: the joy of living.

While Charlotte’s Web also touches upon the inevitability of death, the true focus of the story is on friendship and the power of life. When you sit down to brainstorm your next story or continue your current work in progress, think about what truly matters to you. Ask yourself how you can incorporate it into your story’s plot, characters and themes. Research what you don’t know and then go a step beyond by asking yourself how you can insert your findings in a way that is personal to you--because E.B. White and his legacy are proof that having a truly meaningful story foundation is the most essential storytelling element of all.