E. B. White (Elwyn Brooks White) Biography

American essayist and humorist, born in Mount Vernon, New York, educated at Cornell University; he joined The New Yorker in 1926. White's pithy, gently irreverent observations in his ‘Notes and Comments’ helped set the tone for the magazine throughout its heyday, and influenced his friend James Thurber, with whom he wrote Is Sex Necessary? (1929). His books of essays include Quo Vadimus? (1939); One Man's Meat (1942), a collection of columns written for Harper's Magazine; and The Points of My Compass (1962). White's perennial subject was the comic difficulties of life, though he also wrote on social issues of the day.