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Let’s Remember E. B." White on his birthday perhaps best known for his children’s books: Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan.

James Thurber described White as being a quiet man, disliking publicity, who during his time at The New Yorker would slip out of his office via the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft's to avoid visitors whom he didn't know.

He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White".
 
 He also wrote books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers,accomplishmentrepeated in earlier surveys.

Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.

    — James Thurber, E. B. W., "Credos and Curios"


He published his first article in The New Yorker magazine in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927 and continued to contribute for around six decades. Best recognized for his essays and unsigned "Notes and Comment" pieces, he gradually became the most important contributor to The New Yorker at a time when it was arguably the most important American literary magazine.

In 1949, White published Here Is New York, a short book based upon a Holiday magazine article that he had been asked to write. The article reflects the writer's appreciation of a city that provides its residents with both "the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy", and concludes with a dark note touching upon the forces that may destroy the city that the writer loves. This prescient "love letter" to the city was re-published in 1999 on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, with an introduction by his stepson, Roger Angell.

 In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic guidance for writers of American English had been written and published in 1918 by William Strunk, Jr., one of White's professors at Cornell. The volume is a standard tool for students and writers and remains required reading in many composition classes.

In 1978, White won a special Pulitzer Prize citing "his letters, essays and the full body of his work". Other awards he received included a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and memberships in a variety of literary societies throughout the United States.

In the late 1930s, White turned his hand to children's fiction on behalf of a niece, Janice Hart White. His first children's book, Stuart Little, was published in 1945, and Charlotte's Web appeared in 1952. Stuart Little initially received a lukewarm welcome from the literary community. However, both books went on to receive high acclaim.

White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the U.S. professional children's librarians in 1970, recognizing his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature". At the time it was awarded every five years. That year he was also the U.S. nominee and a highly commended runner-up for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, as he was again in 1976. Also in 1970, White's third children's novel was published, The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1973 it won the Sequoya Award from Oklahoma and the William Allen White Award from Kansas, both selected by students voting for their favorite book of the year.

In 2012, School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Charlotte's Web as top children's novel ("fictional title for readers 9–12" years old). The librarian who conducted it observed that "it is impossible to conduct a poll of this sort and expect [the novel] to be anywhere but #1".


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