The New York Times reviews in Sunday’s book section a new account of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. From what I can tell, the history (and indeed the review) are as essential as the work itself:
Strunk, a philologist versed in Sanskrit, Icelandic, Old Bulgarian and “the history of French verbs,” met White, a gifted student with no time for dreary courses — he got a D in English before finding Strunk — in 1919. Kindred spirits who talked shop while sipping “shandygaff” (diluted beer), they stayed in touch as White’s star rose, until Strunk’s death in 1946.
Over a decade later, White’s New Yorker essay charmed Jack Case, an editor at Macmillan who imagined that “Elements” could catch fire in an age when English instructors had gone “whoring after strange gods.” Letters were written, revisions and additions were made, and soon a double-bylined “Elements” was inflaming (in positive and negative senses) readers, its success unequivocal: 200,000 copies sold in its first year. (Now 50 years in print, it has sold more than 10 million copies.)