Originally edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, and revised and updated by
Martha White. With a foreword by John Updike.
These letters are, of course, beautifully written but above all
personal, precise, and honest. They evoke E.B. White's life in New York
and in Maine at every stage of his life. They are full of memorable
characters: White's family, the New Yorker staff and contributors,
literary types and show business people, farmers from Maine and
sophisticates from New York-Katherine S. White, Harold Ross, James
Thurber, Alexander Woolcott, Groucho Marx, John Updike, and many, many
more.
Each decade has its own look and taste and feel. Places, too-from
Belgrade (Maine) to Turtle Bay (NYC) to the S.S. Buford, Alaska-bound in
1923-are brought to life in White's descriptions. There is no other book
of letters to compare with this; it is a book to treasure and savor at
one's leisure.
As White wrote in this book, "A man who publishes his letters becomes
nudist--nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare
skin....a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time."