E. B. White, Author, Editor and Humorist, Dies at 86

E. B. White, the master of simple writing whose works included the classic children’s story “Charlotte’s Web” and some of the New Yorker magazine’s most memorable essays, died today at his home at the age of 86.

J. Russell Wiggins, publisher of the weekly Ellsworth American and a longtime friend of White, said the author and humorist had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for about a year and his condition had worsened steadily.

White, who also revised “The Elements of Style,” a respected and characteristically compact guidebook for writers, was associated with the New Yorker magazine from its founding in 1925. For 12 years, he wrote the editorial essays in the magazine’s “Notes and Comment,” and collaborated with James Thurber, writing some captions for Thurber’s surreal cartoons. He also edited parts of the “Talk of the Town” section.

White’s humor did not deal in easy or cheap laughs. “Humor plays close to the big, hot fire which is truth,” he once said, “and the reader often feels the heat.”

In “Talk of the Town,” White often wrote about local and national politics, and promoted the idea of world government.

In 1978, a month before his 79th birthday, he received a Pulitzer Prize, a special presentation for his body of works.