Originally edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, and revised and updated by Martha White Foreword by John Updike These letters are, of course, beautifully written but above all personal, precise, and honest. They evoke E.B. White's life in New York and in Maine at every stage of his life. They are full of memorable characters: White's family, the New Yorker staff and contributors, literary types and show business people, farmers from Maine and sophisticates from New York–Katherine S. White, Harold Ross, James Thurber, Alexander Woolcott, Groucho Marx, John Updike, and many, many more. Each decade has its own look and taste and feel. Places, too–from Belgrade (Maine) to Turtle Bay (NYC) to the S.S. Buford, Alaska–bound in 1923–are brought to life in White's descriptions. There is no other book of letters to compare with this; it is a book to treasure and savor at one's leisure. As White wrote in this book, "A man who publishes his letters becomes nudist–nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin....a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time."
Author
Elwyn Brooks White was a leading American essayist, author, humorist, poet and literary stylist and author of such beloved children's classics as Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. He graduated from Cornell University in 1921 and, five or six years later, joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine. He authored over seventeen books of prose and poetry and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973. White always said that he found writing difficult and bad for one's disposition. Mr. White has won countless awards, including the 1971 National Medal for Literature and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which commended him for making “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”
