The Points of My Compass: Letters From the East, the West, the North, the South

New York: Harper & Row, 1962. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. A collection of essays published in the New Yorker between 1954 and 1961, with a foreword by the author and following many essays, a postscript bringing the essay up to date. E. B. "Andy" White and his wife, the New Yorker editor Katherine White, gave copies of this book away for Christmas in 1962.

xiv, 240 pages. White may be most widely known as the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, but he was also one of the great essayists of the 20th century, an indispensable contributor to the New Yorker, and the co-author of one of the best books on writing, The Elements of Style. First edition (stated). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket, which is slightly chipped at the top of the spine. This is one of the Christmas presentation copies, inscribed by E. B. White, "Mollie and Clare with love and a Merry Christmas from Katherine and Andy." A photograph of E. B. White with some geese on his farm with a printed Christmas greeting on the back is laid in. The Christmas postcard, which only has Andy White's name on it, probably dates from the early 1980s, after Katherine's death.

This copy belonged to the Pulitzer Prize- and Academy Award-winning Texas writer Larry McMurtry, who added his stirrup bookplate to the front pastedown. He apparently acquired this book in England as there is a £60 price penciled on the front pastedown. The original recipients of this book were the writer Mollie Panter-Downes and her husband Clare Robinson. As a New Yorker editor, Katherine White suggested Panter-Downes, a novelist, as the New Yorker's London correspondent during the Second World War. Panter-Downes began writing dispatches for the magazine in 1938 and she continued to do so for more than forty years. Whether her war essays inspired E. B. White's own essays about the coming war's effect on America (collected in his terrific book, One Man's Meat) is hard to say, but he was obviously very familiar with Panter-Downs' work.

E. B. White inscribed at least one other book to Mollie Panter-Downes, a copy of Here Is New York (1949), which McMurtry also owned. That book was sold at auction in 2023, for $4,000.