Page "E. B. White" Paragraph 8

In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style.

This handbook of grammatical and stylistic guidance for writers of American English had been written and published in 1918 by William Strunk, Jr., one of White's professors at Cornell.

White's rework of the book was extremely well received, and further editions of the work followed in 1972, 1979, and 1999 ; an illustrated edition followed in 2005.

The illustrator, Maira Kalman, is a contributor to the New Yorker.

That same year, a New York composer named Nico Muhly premiered a short opera based on the book.

The volume is a standard tool for students and writers and remains required reading in many composition classes.

The complete history of The Elements of Style is detailed in Mark Garvey's Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style.