Elwyn Brooks White is one of the finest craftsmen in the specialized literary form known as the familiar or personal essay. In addition, in his long and productive career as essayist, poet, and commentator on contemporary mores, White has found time to write three children's books, one of which, Charlotte's Web (1952), must surely be one of the most widely read and best beloved of this century.

Of himself, White has said "I was born of respectable people in Mount Vernon, New York [on July 11] 1899.... There was an iron vase on the lawn and a copy of Wet Days at Edgwood on the library table. My parents came from Brooklyn: I presume they moved because Mount Vernon sounded tonier and would be better for the children."

Writing modestly, self-effacingly, and with a distinctively bemused-seeming detachment, White has occasionally been criticized for not being sufficiently serious. It has been implied...