Martha White

E. B. White (1899–1985) is best known for his children's books, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Columnist for The New Yorker for over half a century and co-author of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, White hit his stride as an American literary icon when he began publishing his “One Man's Meat” columns from his saltwater farm on the coast of Maine. In E. B. White on Dogs, his granddaughter and manager of his literary estate, Martha White, has compiled the best and funniest of his essays, poems, letters, and sketches depicting over a dozen of White's various canine companions. Featured here are favorite essays such as “Two Letters, Both Open,” where White takes on the Internal Revenue Service, and also “Bedfellows,” with its “fraudulent reports” from White's ignoble old dachshund, Fred. (“I just saw an eagle go by. It was carrying a baby.”) From The New Yorker's “Talk of the Town” are some little-known “Notes and Comment” pieces covering dog shows, sled dog races, and the trials and tribulations of city canines, chief among them a Scottie called Daisy who was kicked out of Schrafft's, arrested, and later run down by a Yellow Cab, prompting The New Yorker to run her “Obituary.” Some previously unpublished photographs from the E. B. White estate show over a dozen of the family dogs, from the first collie, to various labs, Scotties, dachshunds, terriers, half-breeds, and mutts, all well-loved. This is a book for readers and writers who recognize a good sentence and a masterful turn of a phrase; for E. B. White fans looking for more from their favorite author; and for dog lovers who may not have discovered the wit, style, and compassion of this most distinguished of American essayists.

Now in a beautiful hardcover gift edition: E. B. White’s wisest and wittiest homages to his beloved, bedeviled, beguiling New York City. For more than fifty years at The New Yorker, E. B. White came to define the ideal American prose: clear, casual, democratic, and urbane. While his classic Here Is New York captured a specific moment in the life of Manhattan, New York Sketches, the first collection of his casual pieces about the city, offers a more intimate and playful look at the city’s everyday enchantments. Here White ranges at whim from the nesting habits of pigeons to the behavior of snails in aquariums, from the ghosts of old romance that haunt a fire escape or flower shop to the bustle of a calculator trade show on Eighth Avenue. These sketches, some less than a page long, many written for a laugh or in response to the news of the day, show us White at his most sprightly and inventive. Newly presented in a beautiful, pocket-sized hardcover gift edition, New York Sketches is a diversion for every New Yorker—native, adoptive, aspiring, or far from home—and a perfect introduction to what White called “the inscrutable and lovely town.”

Over more than fifty years at the New Yorker, E. B. White came to define a kind of ideal American prose: clear, casual, democratic, and urbane. He also did more than any writer to define his favourite city. His classic Here Is New York captured a moment in the life of Manhattan with precision and love—but his was no fleeting infatuation. In New York Sketches, the first collection of his casual pieces about the city, White ranges at whim from the nesting habits of pigeons to the aisles of a calculator trade-show on Eighth Avenue, from the behaviour of snails in aquariums to the ghosts of old romance that haunt a flower shop or a fire escape or an old hotel. These sketches, some less than a page long, many written for a laugh, or in response to the news of the day, show us White at his most playful and inventive. New York Sketches is a welcome diversion for every New Yorker—native, adoptive, or far from home—and a perfect introduction, not only to what White called “the inscrutable and lovely town,” but to the everyday enchantments of one of her fondest reporters.