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

By:

Sims, Michael

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: New York : Walker & Co., 2011.Description: 307 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 22 cmISBN:

9780802777546 (hardcover)
0802777546 (hardcover)

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

818/.5209 B 22

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.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Non-Fiction	Adult Non-Fiction	818.5209 SIM	Available		36748001995861

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In The Story of Charlotte's Web Michael Sims's shows how E. B. 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 in Mount Vernon, New York, in the first decade of the twentieth century, White translated his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into a book that would be read the world over. Building on a visit to White's farm in Maine, viewing his handwritten first draft of Charlotte's Web , Michael Sims chronicles White's animal-rich childhood, his writing about urban nature for the New Yorker, his scientific research into how spiders spin webs and lay eggs, his friendship with his legendary editor, Ursula Nordstrom, the composition and publication of his masterpiece, and his ongoing quest to recapture an enchanted childhood.

Includes bibliographic references and index.

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

Introduction: Translating Yourself (p. 1)
Part 1 Elwyn
Chapter 1 Enchanted (p. 9)
Chapter 2 Fear (p. 19)
Chapter 3 Trustworthy (p. 33)
Chapter 4 A Writing Fool (p. 42)
Chapter 5 Liebesträum (p. 55)
Part II Andy
Chapter 6 Olympus (p. 69)
Chapter 7 Interview with a Sparrow (p. 86)
Chapter 8 Crazy (p. 96)
Chapter 9 As Spiders Do (p. 106)
Part III Charlotte
Chapter 10 Dream Farm (p. 127)
Chapter 11 The Mouse of Thought (p. 143)
Chapter 12 Foreknowledge (p. 157)
Chapter 13 Zuckerman's Barn (p. 169)
Chapter 14 Spinningwork (p. 175)
Chapter 15 Paean (p. 189)
Chapter 16 Some Book (p. 208)
Chapter 17 Completion (p. 226)
Coda: After Charlotte (p. 236)
Acknowledgments (p. 245)
Abbreviations for Frequent Sources (p. 249)
Notes (p. 251)
Selected Bibliography and Further Reading (p. 289)
Index (p. 297)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Sims (Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form), as a droll observer of the natural world and editor of the annotated edition of one of E.B. White's formative influences, Don Marquis's Archy and Mehitabel, is uniquely qualified to write what is a biography of Charlotte's Web as much as it's a biography of White. White's childhood fascination with the world's smaller denizens and his literary career, including his storied history at The New Yorker, are traced by Sims to their climax in the germination of the plot for Charlotte's Web. Like Beatrix Potter, whose children's stories about anthropomorphized animals were written a half-century before, White consciously avoided moralizing and instead attempted naturalistic faithfulness. Although his children's books were extremely successful and tourists flocked unbidden to his Maine farm each year for his birthday, he longed for solitude throughout his life and felt the greatest connection with animals; Sims successfully argues that Charlotte's Web unintentionally became a "summary of what it felt like to be E.B. White." VERDICT Scholars of children's literature as well as fans-child and grown-up alike-of either White generally or Charlotte's Web in particular will enjoy this biblio-biography.-Megan Hodge, Randolph-Macon Coll. Lib., Ashland, VA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In this spry biography of Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985), Sims (Apollo's Fire) immerses himself in White's oeuvre and channels his lucid prose style. Juxtaposing details from White's essays and letters with his own research and sprinkling the text with White's gimlet-eyed quotations, Sims depicts the author (who lived in suburban Mount Vernon and summered in Maine) as a melancholy wunderkind. The deeply sensitive, meticulous White-"plagued by wild anxieties and indefinable nostalgia" all his life-grew up admiring naturalist writers like Ernest Thompson Seton, and contributing animal stories to St. Nicholas children's magazine. Sims breezes past White's college years, focusing instead on his introversion and romantic-washout status, while also devoting attention to his blossoming as a staff writer and cartoon-captioning whiz for Harold Ross' New Yorker. According to Sims, White drew inspiration from Don Marquis' anthropomorphic cockroach and cat, as well as from wife-to-be Katharine Angell, and fellow writer James Thurber. Not until his 50s, after years in the city and on his small Maine farm, did White utilize these formative influences for Charlotte's Web. Admirers of White's essays and luminous children's literature will be delighted by this amiable chronicle. 8p b&w insert. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Horn Book Review

E. B. White led an examined life indeed -- in his own essays, letters, poems, and countless New Yorker pieces; in others' histories of the New Yorker; and in exhaustive biographies of White. Does the world need another look? Yes, if it is this tightly focused biography, written in a lucid prose worthy of White himself, and steeped in the kind of sensory detail that was White's professional bread and butter. The focus on White as the author of Charlotte's Web gives the book shape and flow but is not limiting. Sims traces direct influences, of course, such as his lifelong affinity for animals and the natural world, his childhood reading, and his early interest in writing, not to mention his deep-seated nostalgia and melancholia. But within that focus Sims tells a remarkably full story of White's life, covering his childhood, college years, New Yorker career, marriage to Katharine Angell, and self-reinvention as a Maine saltwater farmer -- in sentence after faultless, graceful sentence. "He hadn't planned the book [Charlotte's Web] as a summary of what it felt like to be E. B. White, but by the last page it had preserved in amber his response to the world." Simply terrific. martha v. parravano (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

An affectionate biography examines the birth of an American classic.As the subtitle indicates, Sims (Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination, 2007, etc.) concentrates on White's lifelong love of the natural world. He loved the family stable, writes the author, and roamed the undeveloped places in and around Mount Vernon, N.Y., as well as reveling in the rustic beauty of the Belgrade Lakes in Maine, where his family summered. White's reading tastes revolved around the "true life" animal stories of Ernest Thompson Seton and his ilk, and he was also charmed by the antics of Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel. White began writing early, first keeping a diary and then joining the child contributors to St. Nicholas, among whom also numbered his future wife, Katharine Sergeant. Sims also traces White'sNew Yorkercareer, touching lightly on high points and drawing on his writings, both public and private, in which he often adopted the voices of animals. The author avoids the often-irritating tendency of literary biographers to foreshadow portentously from these early experiences, allowing readers to draw their own connections. His examination of the genesis and development ofCharlotte's WebWhite worked desperately to nurse an ill pig back to health, knowing that if he was successful, he would end up killing it anywaywill thrill lovers of the novel. Sims quotes generously from White's working drafts, which were constantly in revision from the beginning. Descriptions of these pages offer both a fascinating insight into the writing process and crushing refutation of any claim that writing for children is easy.Packed with the same kind of sensory detail its subject reveled in, this account is an honorable addition to the literature of letters.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.