Charlotte's Web - History

History

White's editor Ursula Nordstrom said that one day, in 1952, E.B. White handed her a new manuscript out of the blue, the only version of Charlotte's Web then in existence, which she read soon after and was hugely impressed with. Charlotte's Web was published three years after White began writing it.

Since E. B. White published Death of a Pig in 1948, an account of how he failed to save a sick pig (which had been bought in order to be fattened up and butchered), Charlotte’s Web can be seen as White attempting "to save his pig in retrospect."

When White met the spider who originally inspired Charlotte, he called her Charlotte Epeira (after Epeira sclopetaria, the Grey Cross spider, now known as Aranea sericata), later discovering that the more modern name for that genus was Aranea. In the novel, Charlotte gives her full name as "Charlotte A. Cavatica", revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.

The anatomical terms (such as those mentioned in the beginning of chapter nine) and other information that White used came mostly from American Spiders by Willis J. Gertsch and The Spider Book by John Henry Comstock, both of which combine a sense of poetry with scientific fact. White incorporated details from Comstock's accounts of baby spiders, most notably the "flight" of the young spiders and also the way one of them climbs to the top of a fence before launching itself into the air. White sent Gertsch’s book to illustrator Garth Williams. Williams’ initial drawings depicted a spider with a woman’s face, and White suggested that he simply draw a realistic spider instead.

White originally opened the novel with an introduction of Wilbur and the barnyard (which later became the third chapter), but then decided to begin the novel from a human perspective by introducing Fern and her family on the very first page. White’s publishers were at one point concerned with the book’s ending and tried to get White to change it.

Charlotte's Web has become White's most famous book. However, White treasured his privacy and the integrity of the farmyard and barn that helped inspire the novel, which have been kept off limits to the public according to his wishes.