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.”

Letters of E. B. White touches on a wide variety of subjects, including the New Yorker editor who became the author's wife; their dachshund, Fred, with his "look of fake respectability"; and White's contemporaries, from Harold Ross and James Thurber to Groucho Marx and John Updike and, later, Senator Edmund S. Muskie and Garrison Keillor. Updated with newly released letters from 1976 to 1985, additional photographs, and a new foreword by John Updike, this unparalleled collection of letters from one of America's favorite essayists, poets, and storytellers now spans nearly a century, from 1908 to 1985.