The story of Charlotte's web : E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic

The Resource The story of Charlotte's web : E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic
Label
The story of Charlotte's web : E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic
Title remainder
E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic
Statement of responsibility
Michael Sims
Title variation
E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic
Title variation remainder
E.B. Whites eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats, White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people." It is all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E. B. White. With Charlotte's Web, which has gone on to sell more than 45 million copies, the man William Shawn called "the most companionable of writers" lodged his own character, the avuncular author, into the hearts of generations of readers. In this book the author shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole" by mining the raw ore of his childhood friendship with animals in Mount Vernon, New York, translating his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into an all time classic. Blending White's correspondence with the likes of Ursula Nordstrom, James Thurber, and Harold Ross, the E. B. White papers at Cornell, and the archives of HarperCollins and the New Yorker into his own narrative, the author brings to life the shy boy whose animal stories, real and imaginery, made him famous around the world
Biography type
individual biography
Cataloging source
BTCTA
Dewey number
  • 818/.5209
  • B
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • portraits
  • plates
Index
index present
LC call number
PS3545.H5187
LC item number
Z925 2011
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Target audience
adult

Context

Context of The story of Charlotte's web : E.B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic

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