E. B. White

Elwyn Brooks White was born on July 11, 1899, in Mount Vernon, New York. In a 1980 article from the New York Times he discusses his name: “I never liked Elwyn. My mother just hung it on me because she’d run out of names. I was her sixth child.” Later, at Cornell University, he was called Andy and the name stuck with him for life. Andy had several newspaper jobs before starting at the New Yorker magazine in 1927. He worked there as a writer and contributing editor throughout the rest of his career. This is also where he met his wife Katharine. Their son Joel was born in 1930. White wrote plenty for adults including his contribution to The Elements of Style which is familiar to just about anyone who has ever studied writing. As for his classic children’s books, the first was Stuart Little in 1945. This story about…