April, 2009, is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The
Elements of Style, a book first written and published privately
in 1918 by William Strunk for his composition students at
Cornell, but revised and reintroduced to the world by E. B.
White half a century ago. White took English 8 from Strunk in
1919. He then forgot about his freshman composition course, and
its textbook, until 1957, when a friend sent him a copy of The
Elements of Style that he had stolen from the Cornell library.
White wrote about the purloined book in the New Yorker (“Letter
from the East,” July 27, 1957, pp. 35-36; 41- 45), but he
apparently didn’t return it to Cornell. Instead, he revised it
(Strunk had died in 1946), added an introductory essay, and
republished The Elements of Style in 1959. It immediately became
a best-seller, and its four editions have sold more than ten
million copies. Strunk’s “little book” took a reductive approach
to writing, with 8 rules of usage, 10 principles of composition,
and a list of frequently m