In the fall of 1938, as his wife wrote her annual collection of children's book reviews for The New Yorker, White wrote a few paragraphs in his 'One Man's Meat' column in Harper's Magazine about writing children's books. Day liked the stories and encouraged White not to neglect them, but neither Oxford University Press nor Viking Press was interested in the stories, (p 254) and White did not immediately develop them further. In 1935, White's wife Katharine showed these stories to Clarence Day, then a regular contributor to The New Yorker. White typed up a few stories about Stuart, which he told to his 18 nieces and nephews when they asked him to tell them a story. (p 145) As Sims (2011) wrote that Stuart 'arrived in mind in a direct shipment from the subconscious.' (p 145) He had the dream in the spring of 1926, while sleeping on a train on his way back to New York from a visit to the Shenandoah Valley. That's how the story of Stuart Little got started'. In a letter White wrote in response to inquiries from readers, he described how he came to conceive of Stuart Little: 'Many years ago, I went to bed one night in a railway sleeping car, and during the night I dreamed about a tiny boy who acted rather like a rat. According to the first chapter, he looked very much like a mouse in every way. The book is a realistic yet fantastical story about a mouse-like human boy named Stuart Little. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children.

It was White's first children's book, and it is now widely recognized as a classic in children's literature.

Stuart Little is a 1945 American children's novel by E.

Stuart little by eb white