E. B. White Biography

Charlotte's Web About the Author

Born Elwyn Brooks White on July 11, 1899, to Jesse Hart White and Samuel T. White, E. B. White grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb of New York City. The youngest child in a large family, born at the beginning of his father's greatest prosperity, White enjoyed a childhood of unusual privilege for those days. He had the first bicycle in the neighborhood, and at age twelve, his father presented him with a canoe.

White was an inquisitive, open child who attended Mount Vernon public schools, summered in Maine, and eventually enrolled at Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1921. At Cornell, also, he acquired his lifelong nickname, Andy, after Cornell's president, Andrew D. White.

After graduation. White spent several years traveling across the United States and Europe, supporting himself by writing for the United Press, Cunard Lines, and the...
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