1899–1985 · New Yorker essayist and author of Charlotte’s Web
Elwyn Brooks White (11 July 1899 – 1 October 1985) joined The New Yorker in 1927 and became, in the magazine’s own reckoning, its most important contributor — the voice behind decades of essays and unsigned “Notes and Comment” paragraphs. He is best known now for Charlotte’s Web (1952) and Stuart Little (1945), and for revising The Elements of Style. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 1978. The 1941 humor anthology that carries this sentence was assembled with his wife, Katharine S. White (1892–1977), The New Yorker’s fiction editor from 1925 to 1960.