Who is Katherine White from Letters of E. B. White and what is their importance?

White himself acknowledges, in one of his letters, his wife as the best thing that ever happened to him. The divorced mother of two who works as fiction editor of The New Yorker when White is hired, Katherine Sergeant Angell is the product of an old New England family and a graduate of Bryn Mawr—probably one of the early wave of divorced women with careers and children. White's correspondence with Katherine takes the form of letters, long and short, telegrams, and inter-office memos while they are at The New Yorker. The reader is struck by Kate's steadfastness in her devotion to The New Yorker, her husband and their children.

Kate edited the work of numerous early New Yorker fiction writers, and was instrumental—with her husband—in giving John Updike a healthy boost in the early days of his career. The extent to which she nurtured and supported E.B. White in his literary ambitions, which produced a series of highly-successful fictional books for children, may never be known. What is known is that she suffered from poor health throughout most of their marriage, in the form of a series of ailments both rare and ordinary, that frequently hospitalized her. However, it is clear from this correspondence theirs was a strong, supportive and loving marriage that endured many twists and turns.