To the above biography a few items about Mr. White's literary work may be added. It was through an editorial that he first became famous. This appeared in the Emporia Gazette in 1896, with the title, "What's the matter with Kansas?" It contained so much good sense, and was written in such vigorous English that it was copied in newspapers all over the country. Perhaps no other editorial ever brought such sudden recognition to its author. In the same year he published his first book, The Real Issue, a volume of short stories. Some of them pictured the life of a small town, some centered about politics, and some were stories of small boys. These three subjects were the themes of most of Mr. White's later books.
Stratagems and Spoils, a volume of short stories, dealt chiefly with politics, as seen from the inside. In Our Town, from which "The Passing of Priscilla Winthrop" is taken, belongs to the studies of small-town life. His first novel, A Certain Rich Man, was published in 1909. Its theme is the development of an American multi-millionaire, from his beginning as a small business man with a reputation for close dealing, his success, his reaching out to greater schemes, growing more and more unscrupulous in his methods, until at last he achieves the great wealth he had sought, but in winning it he loses his soul.
This book was written during a vacation in the Colorado mountains. His family were established in a log cabin, and he set up a tent near by for a workshop. This is his account of his method of writing:
My working day was supposed to begin at nine o'clock in the morning, but the truth is I seldom reached the tent before ten. Then it took me some time to get down to work. From then on until late in the afternoon I would sit at my typewriter, chew my tongue, and pound away. Each night I read to my wife what I had written that day, and Mrs. White would criticise it. While my work was redhot I couldn't get any perspective on it—each day's installment seemed to me the finest literature I had ever read. She didn't always agree with me. When she disapproved of anything I threw it away—after a row—and re-wrote it.
In his next book, The Old Order Changeth, Mr. White turned aside from fiction to write a series of papers dealing with various reform movements in our national life. He shows how through these much has been done to regain for the people the control of municipal and state affairs. The material for this book was drawn largely from Mr. White's participation in political affairs.
In 1917 he was sent to France as an observer by the American Red Cross. The lighter side of what he saw there was told in The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. His latest book is a long novel, In the Heart of a Fool, another study of American life of to-day.
All in all, he stands as one of the chief interpreters in fiction of the spirit of the Middle West,—a section of our country which some observers say is the most truly American part of America.