“A Biography Its Subject Deserved”
December 15, 2011 Despite the appearance this year of The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, and the imminent arrival of The Dead Witness, his two most recent forays as an editor, for Michael Sims 2011 was unarguably the year of The Story of Charlotte’s Web. This slim volume—a biography not so much of E.B. White as of the book for which he is best remembered—has found its way onto best-of-the-year lists all over the media, and inspired rhapsodic reviews. Today Chapter 16 surveys the praise: