The Story of Charlotte's Web E. B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic

by Sims, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780802777546
• ISBN10: 0802777546
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-07
• Publisher: Walker Books

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 ratsWhite 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's all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E. B. White. WithCharlotte'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. InThe Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims 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 al-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 theNew Yorkerinto his own elegant narrative, Sims brings to life the shy boy whose animal stories--real and imaginery--made him famous around the world.

Author Biography

Michael Sims is the author of the acclaimed Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination, Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, and editor of the recent Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories and The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime He lives in western Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Translating Yourself	p. 1
Elwyn
Enchanted	p. 9
Fear	p. 19
Trustworthy	p. 33
A Writing Fool	p. 42
Liebesträum	p. 55
Andy
Olympus	p. 69
Interview with a Sparrow	p. 86
Crazy	p. 96
As Spiders Do	p. 106
Charlotte
Dream Farm	p. 127
The Mouse of Thought	p. 143
Foreknowledge	p. 157
Zuckerman's Barn	p. 169
Spinningwork	p. 175
Paean	p. 189
Some Book	p. 208
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
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